Slaughter

by John Lutz

  Looking out the door into the bedroom, Renz pointed. “What the hell is that?” He was pointing to a metal object barely visible where the bed’s comforter met the carpet.

  Quinn went over and stooped down, feeling it in his legs. He used his ballpoint pen to ease out the object under the bed.

  “Well?” Renz said, as they looked down at a strange metal contraption that faintly resembled an alligator with its mouth open wide.

  “It’s a wine-cork puller,” Quinn said. “Taken apart. Looks like whoever did it had to use a screwdriver, then couldn’t get it back together.”

  “Gee,” Renz said. “Who do we know who’d do that?”

  “Let’s hope somebody who left a fingerprint,” Quinn said. “And is rich, but not so sophisticated that he knows about self-flushing toilets.”

  Renz wrestled his cell phone from his pocket and used it to check the time. 11:45. The murders here were hours old. How many people had come and gone in the room since then? “The way this place has been wiped down, even if somebody’s prints are on file from these murders, they probably won’t match.”

  Quinn shook his head. “I say that the Gremlin either knows or is afraid there might be matching prints here, or he wouldn’t have taken the chance and gone crazy trying to make sure he’s wiped everything clean. And that commode . . .”

  “What about it?” Renz asked.

  “You tell me. You’ve had time to check on it.”

  “You’re right. I used my iPhone.”

  “And?”

  “The commode isn’t broken—or if it is, the Gremlin broke it. It must have intrigued him because it doesn’t have a flush handle and it’s self cleaning.”

  Quinn was relieved. He was afraid Renz was going to tell him about how someone might have drowned via the toilet bowl, an ignoble death no one should be forced to endure.

  Almost no one.

  “I’m informed that the so called auto-flush feature is in a lot of swank hotels,” Renz continued, “but none that our killer would have stayed in if he knew he wasn’t going to pay the bill. This one tickled his fancy and he couldn’t help taking it apart, or at least examining it to see how it worked. Gadgets are like porn for this guy. He couldn’t get the thing back together and make it work, and he got flustered and had to rush to finish up here. That’s why the place looks like it was given a once-over by a maid on speed.”

  “If there are prints that can be matched,” Renz said, “the Crime Scene Unit will find them. They’re a capable bunch, here in St. Louie.”

  “Notice that nobody here says ‘St. Louie’?”

  “I say it,” Renz said. “But then I’m not one of the Millennials.”

  “Even if we don’t have the killer’s matching prints on file, he might think we have them,” Quinn said. “That could work just as well. The clock is ticking. That should prompt the kind of response we want.”

  “I prefer being proactive,” Renz said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Quinn asked.

  “Means I have to wrap this up, then get back to New York and catch up playing commissioner. Seems we’ve got other problems in town there. Not just our dead-then-undead girl. Which isn’t even a crime, as far as I know. How are Pearl and Weaver holding up?”

  “Impatiently. They want action. Haven’t had so much as a nibble from the Gremlin. He’s cautious and he’s smart,” Quinn said. “You can bet he’s at least mulling over going for the bait.”

  “Meanwhile we’ve got another death of note. A famous architect engineer.”

  “Victim or perpetrator?”

  “Maybe both. I don’t have the complete picture. It was a car accident but the police don’t know whether it was an accident, suicide, or murder.”

  “Got a name on the victim?”

  “Ethan Ellis,” Renz said.

  Quinn was surprised. “The guy who’s designing the MOMA addition?”

  “The same. I forgot you were a devotee of the arts.”

  “Any connection between that death and what we’re doing here?”

  “Only in the way everything is in some way connected with every other,” Renz said. “Be sure to get in touch with me if there are any issues.”

  “Are issues something like problems?” Quinn asked.

  Renz said, “Have a blessed day,” and left to go to his car.

  74

  New York, the present

  At Faith Recovery Center, Quinn stayed out of sight, behind the folding doors that partitioned Weaver’s room from the adjoining one. In the monitor propped high in a corner, he could see Weaver with bandages over much of her face, lying beneath a thin white sheet that made her look all the worse. Her bulletproof vest was completely covered by the sheet, as was the Ruger .25 semiautomatic handgun, within easy reach of her right hand. The plastic IV tube alongside her bed dripped only simple glucose.

  A second monitor was trained on the door to the next room, so that anyone entering or leaving would be seen. Quinn knew that just outside the door was a uniformed cop in a chair borrowed from one of the small waiting areas. The uniform had a good view of the elevators from where he sat, as well as a view of anyone who might open the door to the fire stairs.

  In the wall monitor, Quinn saw Fedderman pause outside in the hall, then enter Weaver’s room. He was wearing a light raincoat and his hair looked damp. Fedderman took a quick glance at the tiny camera near the room’s ceiling, disguised to look like one of the sprinkler heads of a fire-protection system. He walked over to the bed and leaned down, said something to Weaver that Quinn couldn’t make out. Weaver seemed to nod.

  As Quinn watched in the monitor, Fedderman walked toward the folding doors separating the two rooms. Then the doors parted near the wall and he appeared in the flesh and life-size.

  “Watching old Adam-12 reruns?” Fedderman asked.

  Quinn thought about telling him ten-four, but he didn’t want to start something. “Weaver still doing okay?” he asked instead.

  “Says her flak jacket chafes. We both agreed that if that was our biggest problem we were doing okay.”

  “You’re early if you’re here to relieve me,” Quinn said.

  “I came in to show you these,” Fedderman said. “Renz wanted me to make sure you saw them.” He reached beneath his tan light raincoat and handed Quinn some printouts. “The police sketch artist aged these photos and they appear to be the older woman who was killed in St. Louis.”

  There were three copies of black-and-white photographs, front and profile views of a teenage girl. They weren’t mug shots. She was wearing different blouses and might even have been older in one of the shots. In that one she had a more mature profile, and a different hairdo. It was cut short rather than shoulder length, as in the other photos.

  The third printout wasn’t a photo but an appeal to report the whereabouts of a missing sixteen-year-old girl named Jasmine. It was dated fifteen years ago. She had disappeared from the family farm one night and never been heard from again.

  “Twenty-year-old Jordan Kray, a hired hand on the farm, disappeared at approximately the same time as Jasmine’s sudden and unexpected departure.”

  “A connection?” Quinn asked.

  “They might have been an item,” Fedderman said. “A week after the disappearances, several people noticed half a dozen buzzards circling in the clear blue sky. Two men drove out to investigate.

  “They saw more buzzards on the ground. Some of them were pecking and standing on something dark among the corn. One of the men got a shotgun from the truck’s rear window rack and blasted away. Scared the birds, but they didn’t go far.

  “The man with the shotgun saw what interested the big birds. There was a man—or what used to be a man—barely visible in the rows of corn. His clothes were ripped and filthy, and birds and animals had gotten to him.

  “There was an empty, worn, and weathered leather wallet near what was left of the dead man’s body, Nothing in the wallet. No identification. The man who owned
the farm kept asking the Highway Patrol troopers to remove the dead man from his field. He was informed that he was growing crops on a government easement.

  “As the body was dragged a few feet closer to the tracks, onlookers saw that the victim was male and had on oversized Levi’s that were reduced to rags that fell away when he was moved.

  “The dead man was barefoot. Empty wallet, missing shoes. No watch—wrist or pocket. He’d been picked clean.”

  More and more it looked to Quinn as if the dead man had been a train hopper. Maybe one who followed the simple philosophy of empathizing with losers, and then acting on what he’d seen or heard. What he’d learned. There were plenty of that kind around. Always they had ulterior motives. Always they were acting.

  Sometimes they were lambs. Sometimes wolves. All the time they couldn’t be trusted.

  75

  New York City, the present

  In Faith Recovery Center, the uniform was seated in a chair outside where Officer Nancy Weaver lay in bed, where she was pretending to be Pearl pretending to be lost in a coma. Her protector was Sergeant Dave Gregg, three inches over six feet, and forty pounds over two hundred. He’d been with the NYPD over twenty years and had seen about everything that cops saw. He’d considered it an honor rather than duty when he’d been assigned this job. The two men running the show were fixtures in NYPD nobility. Renz, the commissioner who might someday become mayor. And Quinn, who was already a legend.

  For the third time this evening Officer David Gregg braced with his arms and lifted his bulk up out of his chair. He hitched up his black uniform belt, yawned, and slowly strolled down to the waiting area near the end of the hall to get a candy bar out of one of the vending machines.

  None of the nurses or occasional doctors seemed to take the presence of the big uniformed cop as an indication that something might be wrong. Or, if not wrong, unusual. They were quick to return his smile, but always they hurried along. All that weaponry on his belt was made to inflict injury or death, the two things the doctors and nurses in the recovery center were trained to detest.

  Gregg was glad to see there were still Zero bars in the machine. They were his favorite. They were delicious when washed down with a cheap red wine, but this wasn’t the time or place for that. Maybe later.

  A female doctor entered, recognized as such by Gregg because she was wearing pale blue scrubs, a matching skullcap, and floppy pull-on shoe covers. A crinkled cloth mask was still tied loosely around the doctor’s neck. Coiled below the mask’s tie strings were the twin tubes and earpieces of a stethoscope.

  “Beautiful evening,” Gregg said, and was answered with a smile. Everyone was so nice here it almost made you want to recover from something.

  As the doctor eased around Gregg’s bulk, it occurred to Gregg that he’d never seen anyone who looked more like a brilliant surgeon.

  That was what alarmed him.

  Still smiling, he reached out as if he were going to shake hands with the doctor. Instead he grabbed her wrist and held it in a powerful lock in one of his big hands.

  This felt great to Gregg. He hadn’t been fooled for long, and now he was making the collar. This was the kind of thing that might get him interviewed in the Times.

  The play of strength in the doctor’s arm prompted Gregg’s first misgiving. Something was wrong here. The doctor was strong as a man. Was a man. Not a large man, but strong out of proportion to his size.

  The man’s tightly fitted blue surgeon’s cap had tilted and revealed a protruding ear, almost perfectly pointed. It gave him a constant appearance of alertness.

  Gregg’s smile faded as he said, “I think you’d better—”

  He saw the stiletto-like knife in the doctor’s right hand. The long pointed blade looked as if it were designed for taking and not saving lives.

  It entered Gregg’s corpulent body easily, angled upward tight to his sternum, and pierced his heart.

  He couldn’t cry out an alarm. Instead he made what sounded like a hopeless sob. No one had ever looked more like a real lady surgeon than his killer. Gregg knew he should have noticed that, acted on it, alerted the others . . . But he’d done his job. And now the light was fading.

  He needed a doctor!

  He didn’t fall. The Gremlin supported Gregg and helped him to stumble over to a chair.

  Gregg felt himself being eased down into the chair.

  Once the brief struggle had begun, the whole thing hadn’t taken half a minute. Gregg was having a hard time seeing now. He was too weak to move under his own power, and he knew he was dying.

  He heard a distant, amused voice. “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”

  In some remote part of his brain, Gregg was glad somebody had a sense of humor.

  Then the pain came.

  When Gregg was dead, the Gremlin propped him firmly in the waiting room chair and arranged his arms and legs. Now he was posed looking like what he was, a cop taking a break. Arranging the body had gotten blood on the Gremlin’s surgical scrubs, but that was okay. He knew that now he looked even more like a genuine doctor.

  Or one from Central Casting.

  He glanced at his watch. It was time to make the phone call. The one that would end the game with the winner not in doubt. Time for Quinn to learn his final and most important lesson: The winning game was not always the long game. Not even always the game you think you’re playing.

  He made his phone call.

  And then another, that would change worlds and futures.

  76

  Weaver scratched beneath her left armpit where the bulletproof vest chafed. She tried to get something like comfortable. Her two-way produced nothing but static. She gave up for the moment. Probably some piece of medical equipment was running somewhere nearby, emitting rays that cured this or that, or displayed that or this, and interfered with communication. Weaver decided to give up for the time being and rest. A real coma wouldn’t be bad right now. Except for the fact that she might not wake up.

  Keeping that in mind, she tried to ignore her restlessness, and to resist scratching where the bulky vest itched.

  Weaver’s chief protector was now sitting dead near the other end of the hall. The killer had left a folded section of newspaper tented over the cop’s ample midsection so the blood wouldn’t seep through after a while and be noticed.

  The Gremlin had scouted the territory, learning the layout of the rehab center. He knew the target’s room number, and had even glanced into the room while making sure he knew where the clean laundry was stored.

  It had all worked well, at least for a while.

  It took the police less than ten minutes to get there. Sirens growled to silence as two NYPD radio cars pulled in at an angle to the curb in front of the Center.

  Quinn was already, along with Fedderman, running toward the room where Weaver played the mystery woman who’d entered and then left the afterlife, and just a few seconds ago had almost lost her corporeal life.

  He made it to room 409 just in time to watch the elevator doors close. But not before he caught a glimpse of Weaver inside. She wore a hospital gown stained with blood, probably from her nose, which appeared broken. The Gremlin was holding her with her arm bent behind her, in such a way that any upward pressure made her grimace in pain.

  When she saw Quinn she smiled.

  The subtle smile was brief and only at the corners of her lips, but it informed Quinn that the Gremlin had taken the bait. He had, ostensibly, Pearl, disguised as Weaver, playing the role of Pearl.

  This was the kind of labyrinth the Gremlin wanted, or thought he wanted. Advanced chess.

  More radio cars, sans sirens, arrived silently and were lined up outside the center. Both ends of the driveway were blocked.

  The Gremlin slid behind Weaver, locked the double glass doors, and retreated into the maze of halls and rooms beneath the center.

  Weaver felt around beneath her gown for her Ruger but couldn’t find it. As they hurried down a hall l
ined with identical pea-green doors, the Gremlin removed the Ruger and held it up so she could see it.

  Most of the rooms were unoccupied, but some of them sheltered recuperating patients. Now and then someone would glance at them from inside a room. If they had spotted something wrong, they didn’t want to become involved. They didn’t want to become dead.

  The Gremlin needed one of those patients for a convincer. The woman who’d been dead but was somehow again alive had to know he would use the gun.

  There was so much he wanted her to tell him.

  A PA system clicked and buzzed. Then a woman’s calm voice proclaimed that there were “difficulties being dealt with,” and instructed patients and staff to remain behind the locked door of whichever room they were in until they heard the all clear. That was appropriately ambiguous, the killer thought. It carried exactly the right touch of controlled urgency. Panic was right around the corner.

  Footfalls sounded ahead of them, and a uniformed cop and another nurse came into view. The cop had the woman by the elbow, hurrying her along. Suddenly they were face-to-face.

  The Gremlin drew Weaver’s gun and blasted away. The cop, who’d managed to get his gun halfway out of its holster, sat down and his eyes went blank. The nurse stared horrified at the Gremlin and started backing away.

  The Gremlin bent down to get the cop’s gun from its holster.

  “You killed him!” the young nurse stammered, then she spun on her heel and ran down the hall to where it took a right turn.