Slaughter

by John Lutz

  “He needs to know how death works.”

  68

  “I heard most of the conversation,” Pearl said, when Quinn and Weaver had broken their connection. They’d recorded most of the Helen/Minnie conversation on their cell phones.

  Quinn laid his phone on a bookcase. Most of the best mystery writers’ books were there. Tricky folks, those. Had they influenced him? He hadn’t mentioned to Pearl that she would be the primary target in Quinn’s plan. The bait. She was the one in the killer’s sights, whatever the condition of Weaver. Had been his ultimate target almost from the time of his arrival in the city.

  It was Helen’s opinion that Pearl was the most important piece on the killer’s imaginary game board, the queen that had to fall.

  That Weaver ostensibly was the ideal bait also made her the ideal diversion.

  Pearl was what the killer had to claim to complete the mad symmetry of his purpose in life. And in death.

  “You don’t have to do it,” Quinn repeated to Pearl.

  She smiled. “I want to do it. I want to stop this bastard just as much as you do.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. The reasons that sound corny if you say them out loud.”

  “The lady in the harbor?”

  “I don’t want to get all metaphysical before I brush my teeth,” Pearl said.

  Quinn poured a cup of coffee, then sat down at the kitchen table. He sipped as he stared out the window at a ledge of the building next door. A small pigeon kept landing there, which seemed to drive the other pigeons nuts, because they would flap around and coo and fly at the intruder. As Quinn watched the avian combat, it occurred to him that he had never before seen a tiny, half-grown pigeon. He wondered if for some reason there weren’t any, or if he simply hadn’t been looking. Were they the victims of hawks? He knew there were hawks in Manhattan. Their presence had been called to his attention, and he had seen them.

  Quinn wondered what else in life he simply hadn’t noticed. He had so far seen a certain kind of life a great deal, but there was more, much more.

  There had to be.

  Quinn drove to Faith Recovery and parked the Lincoln on the street.

  The amazing imaginary woman who’d been in a car accident and lost her memory was on his mind, haunting his thoughts. He almost believed it himself, that he and she were going to enter a maniac’s mind and destroy him. All or most of the plan had been hatched by Helen the profiler, in partnership with a former cop who’d learned psychology on the streets.

  Their plan—their trap—should work, and perhaps it might even evolve into something that surely would work.

  Quinn and Helen hadn’t simply been burning up calories when they jogged twice daily around the block. Helen moderated her pace, and with Quinn had memorized their surroundings, the layout of Faith Recovery Center’s reception area, the location of the elevators, the entrances and exits, including the ones only for staff, the fire escapes, numeric sequences of the rooms, radiology, cardiac, and operating areas.

  The place was a large enough facility to have a park-like area behind it, as well as a small gift shop and cafeteria.

  Quinn glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost seven p.m. Time to go to the room adjoining Weaver’s, through an open, wide door designed to admit gurneys and wheelchairs.

  Weaver was good at her job. She actually appeared injured and drugged. She was convincing as a woman who’d died and come back. The power of suggestion.

  Can you do that? Ethan Ellis wondered, putting down the Times. Actually return from the dead?

  Not long ago he would never have asked himself that question. But maybe he should have. Now the bitter pill he could never swallow was the truth. There were no second chances. And even if there were, he knew in his heart he wouldn’t have taken the smarter and more honorable road.

  He knew he had to pull himself together. His wife, Cynthia, and his son, Jeremy, would wonder where he was.

  Ethan was in the lobby of the recently rebuilt AA AAL building, financed by oil money and the taxpayers. He was the creative genius who’d figured out the best way to add marble and stone and glass and at the same time make the building almost twice as tall as its original thirty stories. Already the building was sixty percent rented. Now he was to accept his second Golden Architectural Award.

  It was a night for celebration.

  But damping high spirits was the subtle but persistent rhythmic whack, whack, whack that pounded through his head.

  Then came the images of what Manhattan could become.

  The pain.

  Ellis bowed his head and sobbed.

  69

  Minnie Miner’s voice thrummed with excitement when she called Quinn the next morning on his cell.

  “It’s working, Quinn! I made sure the Helen Iman interview was the hottest thing online, and that got us a lot of the print media. Not to mention even more video. CNN and Fox News are still running it on their loops. On Twitter it’s—”

  “Sounds good so far,” Quinn interrupted. “Odds are that one place or another, the Gremlin will see it, hear it, or read it.”

  “According to Helen, he’s bound to come in contact with it because he’ll be looking for it hard. He’s hooked on his own infamy. He can’t stay away from watching and reading about himself, no matter how hard he tries. This is what the sicko has been working for. It’s what they all want. To become legends. Their life is a story, and what’s a story without a slam-bang ending?”

  “Helen isn’t always right.”

  “Yes, she is,” Minnie said. “She’s my hero.”

  “Mine, too. If this continues to work.”

  “Nobody said it would be easy.”

  “That oughta tell us something,” Quinn said.

  He turned off his cell phone alarm and went into the bathroom to take his shower.

  Quinn was toweling off, and was going to wake up Pearl, when the landline phone rang. This ring was louder than the cell phone’s alarm, and should have been loud enough to wake Pearl. He imagined her fluffing her pillow and gradually rising from sleep. He managed a gruff “’Lo . . .” as he picked up the phone.

  “Quinn. It’s Nancy Weaver. How come you aren’t in your office?”

  “I just got awakened by a phone call at my home. In my bed.” A small lie to help make his point.

  “No need to be pissed off,” Weaver said. “I’m the bearer of good news. I think. Homicide called about fifteen minutes ago. There’s this couple in St. Louis, Fran and Willie Clarkson, that owns and operates a brat stand.”

  “A what?”

  “Brat stand. People in St. Louis like their bratwurst. You know, they look like hot dogs.”

  “The people in St. Louis?”

  “I’m barely awake, Nancy. Get to the point.”

  At the mention of Nancy’s name, Pearl sat straight up in bed. “Dammit, Quinn!”

  Weaver said, “The male half of this couple, Willie Clarkson, called about something that happened in their bratwurst stand about thirteen or fourteen years ago. They saw the stories about the Gremlin and his ear and thought they’d better call.” Quinn waited silently, staring at Pearl while she stared back, and listening to Weaver tell about the young couple, Pablo and May Diaz, and the episode with the knife. And the eviscerated rat.

  “All this might have nothing to do with anything,” Quinn said.

  “I wish I could e-mail you a photo of the rat.”

  “Never mind that,” Quinn said.

  “The Clarksons cleaned up the place at the time anyway. There was nobody there to tell them otherwise, and Fran said the rat was creeping her out. There were no investigations at the time, either. But word got around. Somebody crossed out the B in their stand’s outside menu.”

  “Cruel,” Quinn said. “To you, me, the Clarksons, and the rat.”

  “Minnie Miner is spreading the word about my ‘accident, ’” Weaver said. Her voice was eager, without a tremor of fear. He could imagine the di
amond glint in her sly eyes. Weaver was born for action. The huntress was on the scent.

  “I want to go through it again,” Quinn said.

  “I don’t want to recite it again, Quinn.”

  “Good. I want you to listen. The news-starved media will grab this story as if it’s a hamburger. You’ll be reported as being on the critical list after the auto accident. The doctors will have put you in an induced coma. They’ll express amazement that you’re still alive after your heart stopped beating for over five minutes. You simply came awake after you were pronounced dead and had no vital signs. There seems no reason that, when aroused from your coma, you won’t return to normal.”

  “Gee, I feel better already.”

  “You’ll stay in your hospital bed at Faith, supposedly making the first meager beginnings of a complete recovery. You’ll be touted as a medical miracle.”

  “And the killer will be obsessed with finding out how I . . . work.” She said this with little emotion.

  “What he won’t know is that you’ll be watched every minute, and we can be in your room within seconds. Just in case, you’ll be wearing a Kevlar bulletproof jacket beneath your hospital gown.”

  “I want my nine-millimeter,” Weaver said, still with her calm, flat voice.

  “You’ll have it, but you probably won’t need it.”

  “Such a plan we have,” Weaver said.

  “You should be safe. Helen is certain of one thing. The woman the killer will want more than anyone in that hospital room, and whose death will be a personal tragedy and defeat for me, is Pearl. He’s chosen the time and place. Everything else will be a diversion.”

  “And he’ll assume I’m Pearl.”

  “Yes. Pretending to be someone else.”

  “Who is also pretending to be Pearl.”

  “Uh-huh. He won’t be sure, though. He can’t be.”

  “Won’t he notice the bulky flak jacket under my gown?” Weaver asked.

  “He shouldn’t, what with all the distracting plastic tubes and medical paraphernalia around you.”

  “At the least, he’ll hesitate.”

  “Right. His target is the real Pearl, pretending to be someone else. He’ll surely expect something like that. Much like a marble under one of three walnut shells a huckster keeps moving around.”

  “What prevents the Gremlin, and not you, from being the last to incorporate a switch?”

  “I know him,” Quinn said. “He likes back-and-forth trickery, but not if it gets too complex “

  “This is too complex?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Three women are involved, and one of them isn’t real.”

  “Thank God!” Weaver said, “that not everything happening around here is real.”

  “Don’t be too thankful,” Quinn said. “Remember that the woman in Pearl’s bed, beneath the black wig, all the Kevlar, and Pearl’s bandages, will be you. Pretending to be Pearl pretending to be a woman who already died once.”

  “Pretending to be pretending,” Weaver said. ”Because Helen has convinced you that the Gremlin wants Pearl even more than he wants the woman who cheated death.”

  “She didn’t exactly cheat death,” Quinn said. “She only visited.”

  He worked the miniature keyboard on his iPhone.

  “Who are you calling now?” Weaver asked.

  “LaGuardia,” he said. “Flight to St. Louis. Old habits die hard.”

  70

  St. Louis, the present

  Jordan knocked on the door to Samuel’s riverfront hotel room.

  Light shifted in the peephole. An unintelligible voice sounded from the other side of the door. Jordan moved over so Samuel could see him.

  He knocked louder, so it could almost be said he was about to make a scene.

  The door opened, and there was Samuel, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. He looked worried and scared as he shut the door behind Jordan. Then he made a show about looking at his watch. Rather the white mark on his wrist where the watch would be after he got it from the nightstand in the bedroom and slipped it on.

  “We were supposed to meet farther down on the riverfront, at ten o’clock. It’s only nine fifteen.”

  “I thought this would be more private,” Jordan said.

  Standing there in worn loafers, sockless and shirtless, with his hair looking like it had been in a blender, Samuel made a face that was probably meant to scare Jordan, or at least gain the offensive. Some offensive. “I don’t like you changing the rules as we go along,” he said.

  “Not to worry,” Jordan said.

  “Did you bring the money I lent you?”

  “Of course I did.”

  There was another soft knock on the door.

  Jordan ambled over and opened it. Behind him, Samuel Pace took a few steps and then stopped, trying to get a handle on what was happening here.

  “Who’s that?” he asked in a tight voice, as if someone had him by the neck but hadn’t yet squeezed in earnest.

  “The photographer,” Jordan said. “Remember? You said you might bring your lady, Eleanor, so she could pose for some shots.”

  He opened the door and stepped aside. Jasmine slipped in quickly. She had a digital camera slung around her neck on a broad black strap. Jordan thought she looked old beyond her years.

  She got right into the flow, looking around. “Where’s Eleanor?”

  A slight noise came from the direction of the bedroom. Three heads turned that way.

  Tall, blond, and very young, Eleanor opened the bedroom door and stepped into the sun-drenched main room. Her long hair was tousled but in a wild way that was strangely attractive. She wore a sheet like a toga, and looked like something out of a Shakespeare madness play.

  She smiled and said, “I’m Eleanor. I hear you want to photograph me.”

  As she talked, her gaze traveled from Samuel to Jasmine to Jordan. Her look lingered, and she appeared to want to say something about Jordan’s jockey-like size, and then changed her mind.

  Still she seemed amused. That didn’t set well with Jordan. Neither did Eleanor’s seemingly unshakeable confidence. He wanted control of this again. He said, “You’re from money, right, Eleanor?”

  “Money?”

  “Your family.”

  Her smile became wider, displaying perfect white teeth. “It shows?”

  “Very much so. And I’m thinking you booked the hotel and paid the way for Samuel to be here with you.”

  Eleanor glanced Samuel’s way and flashed a reassuring smile. Surely somewhere, sometime, she had been a cheerleader.

  “That’s none of your business,” Samuel said. Feisty, but he could no longer disguise his growing fear. There was an off-key note here that he was beginning to hear but Eleanor hadn’t yet discerned.

  She moved slightly toward Jordan, who smiled and said, “You ever hear of the Gremlin?”

  “No. What is it?”

  Jordan seemed surprised and miffed. He stared at her, noting with disgust that she was the taller of the two. “Don’t you watch the news?”

  “No. I don’t have time for that crap. It’s all lies, anyway.” She stood more erectly and spread her legs so the sheet was stretched taut between her thighs and emphasized her figure. “The Gremlin . . . Didn’t that used to be a car or something? Or wait a second—that building in Russia?”

  “Your first guess was right,” Jordan said.

  “Anybody’d buy a car called a Gremlin would have to think it was guaranteed to give them trouble. They should have stayed with Jaguar or Rolls.”

  “You think your money can buy you out of any kind of trouble, don’t you?” Jordan said.

  Eleanor sneered. “Matter of fact, I do. My family has attorneys that will drain you like a sun-dried tomato. Not like your pro bono public defenders, you miserable little pissant.”

  Uh-oh! The discord was out in the open where everyone might hear and see it.

  Samuel said, “Eleanor . . . please!” He could feel his heart
hammering.

  Jordan had had enough of this. Had really had enough.

  He went into the bedroom and returned with a pillow. In his right hand was a small .25 caliber Ruger handgun. He wrapped the pillow around the gun, pointed it at Eleanor, and said, “By God, girl, you’ve got spirit.” It was a line he remembered from an old movie. Or close enough, anyway.

  She stiffened her spine and stared down her nose at him. “You better believe I’ve got spirit. Enough that—”

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The shot from such a small gun was muffled by the pillow and didn’t make much noise, but feathers from the pillow flew.

  Eleanor looked startled, then plucked one of the pillow feathers from the air, stared down at it where it was held loosely in her hand, and said, “This is real goose down. This is a good hotel.”

  She closed her eyes and fell.

  Jordan looked over and saw Samuel standing rooted to the spot. He saw that the front and one leg of Samuel’s pants were stained where he had relieved himself. Walking close, careful where he stepped so he wouldn’t get a shoe wet, Jordan used the gun and pillow again, placing the bullet perfectly between Samuel’s eyebrows.

  It was a hell of a shot, considering the pillow tended to spoil your aim.

  Jasmine was standing stunned, her mouth hanging open. Then she looked around as if coming out of a trance, saw all the goose down in the air, and began a crazy, cackling laughter, catching and releasing the feathers, repeating, “My God, it’s snowing! It’s snowing!”