by John Lutz
Quinn was satisfied with his chances. He never expected or needed a brass ring.
A toehold would do.
In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, then leaned close and examined them in the mirror. Too yellow, and they seemed slightly crooked, and maybe that was a cavity way back there. He’d neglected them too long. A trip to a dentist wouldn’t be a bad idea for his appearance. He’d lost a couple of molars in a long-ago fight, and broken the bridgework since. Other than that, he still had his own teeth. He smiled, then shook his head at the rawboned, luckless thug looking back at him. Rough. Downright grizzly. Scary.
The smile disappeared and he turned away, sickened with himself.
He’d sunk. He could see it now that he was looking up again. He’d sunk so goddamned far! An outcast, a sexual predator the neighbors whispered about and avoided. He drank too much and thought too much, and spent too much time alone. His wife and his own daughter were afraid of him.
It isn’t fucking fair!
He turned again toward the mirror and drew back his fist, thinking of smashing his ruined image, cracking it into fragments so it resembled his broken life.
There again was his sad smile. And his own sad eyes staring back at him. Movie shit, punching mirrors. Heavy-handed symbolism. In real life it accomplished nothing and meant nothing.
Self-pity was his problem. Self-pity was like a drug that would pull him down as surely as any of the drugs on the street.
He went to the closet and rooted through his clothes. Whatever he had, it would have to do until he got an advance on his salary from Renz.
Bum’s clothes. Goddamned bum’s wardrobe!
Or maybe it wasn’t that bad. He didn’t have a decent suit but could put together what might loosely be called an outfit. A wrinkled pair of pants, a white dress shirt that had long sleeves and would be hot as hell this time of year, and a blue sport coat that wasn’t too bad if he kept the ripped pocket flap tucked in. Shoes were okay, a black pair, which he’d bought years ago, that weren’t too badly worn and were actually comfortable.
A shave, a reasonable taming of his unruly hair—starting to gray—and he could still look enough like a cop.
Which he was, damn it!
He was a cop.
A lot of blood.
That was the first thing that struck Quinn the next morning after he’d unwrapped crime scene tape from the door-knob and let himself into the Elzner apartment with the key Renz had taped to the back of the murder file.
The Elzners had died in their kitchen. Though it wasn’t so evident in the crime scene photos, it looked as if the wife, Jan, had dragged herself a few feet before expiring and left some bloody scratches on the freshly painted white door. Quinn didn’t think the scratches were an attempt at writing a dying message, more the result of death throes.
Stepping around the crusted dried blood on the kitchen floor, Quinn made his way to the table. The groceries were still there. The can of tuna that had been on the floor near the body was now next to one of the two small, unmarked plastic bags. There were some oranges, a loaf of wheat bread, a jar of peanut butter. Nothing perishable other than the oranges, according to the file. Also there were two jars of gourmet strawberry jam.
Quinn didn’t touch anything as he leaned down to peer at the price tags on the jam jars. Expensive.
He left the table and examined the holes in the walls from the bullets that had gone through Jan Elzner. Two holes. One wide and jagged, struck by a misshapen, nearly spent bullet that had passed through too much tissue or bone. The other hole was as circular and neat as if it had been made by a drill bit, from the bullet that had made it through to the next apartment and led to the discovery of the bodies.
Standing there in the kitchen, Quinn felt something stir deep in his gut. The crime scene didn’t feel like murder-suicide. The roughly outlined positions of the bodies, the half-finished mundane task of putting away groceries. No foresight or even rudimentary planning was evident here.
Hubby was supposedly the shooter. If the wife had been interrupted by sudden, violent death while putting away groceries, her body probably wouldn’t have dropped where it had. And Hubby wouldn’t have been in such a rush to kill himself that he’d knock a can of tuna off the table.
Of course it was all possible.
But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like murder. And an unlikely, perhaps senseless one. An unsuspecting couple living out their domestic lives, and some evil bastard decided they’d had enough and ended it for them, maybe for no reason other than so he could watch them die. Evil. It wasn’t a word Quinn shied away from, because he’d learned long ago it was a palpable thing that never quite left where it visited. And it was here, in the Elzners’ kitchen, his old and familiar enemy.
Do something about this. You can do something about who did this if you don’t screw up.
Quinn realized he’d turned a corner and was assuming the killer wasn’t Martin Elzner.
It was the kind of gut assumption any old cop knew not to ignore.
Quinn went into the Elzners’ bedroom. Everything was neat in there except for the unmade bed, obviously slept in by two. There was a set of women’s pink slippers on the floor near the bed, the kind without heels that you could slide your feet right into. Mules, he thought they were called. But maybe not.
He made a mental note to check and see if Jan Elzner’s corpse had bare feet. If so, it suggested she might have awakened suddenly, maybe heard something in the kitchen that alarmed her, and hurried out there, in too much of a rush even to step into her slippers. Which would mean she’d been in bed alone at the time, or she would have alerted her husband.
Interesting, the slippers.
Mules?
Quinn nosed around in the bedroom some more, then the bathroom, finding nothing of use or interest.
He returned to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The usual. A carton of milk, now gone bad. Some half-used condiments, a six-pack of diet Coke, two cans of Budweiser. In the door shelves were a bottle of orange juice, an unopened bottle of Chablis, a jar of pickles, and two plastic Evian bottles, one of which was opened and half-empty. And something else: a jar of the same kind of gourmet strawberry jam that was on the kitchen table.
Quinn used a dry dish towel wadded on the sink counter to open the jar. It was almost full of jam.
After screwing the lid back on and replacing the jar, he shut the refrigerator door and tossed the towel back on the counter, near a glass vase containing a small bouquet of neglected yellow roses that had died not long after the Elzners. Then he opened the freezer compartment at the top of the refrigerator.
Three frozen dinners—free-range chicken. How free were they, really? Some frozen meat wrapped in white butcher paper. A rubber-lidded dish containing chocolate-chip cookies. Quinn leaned forward and peered into the icemaker basket—full of cubes.
The apartment was warm and the cool air tumbling from the freezer felt good, but he shut the narrow white door and heard the refrigerator motor immediately start to hum. A couple of decorative magnets were stuck to the door—a Statue of Liberty, an unfurled American flag—but there was nothing pinned beneath them. No messages. Such as, who might try to kill us.
Quinn figured he’d seen enough. He left the apartment, locking the door behind him and replacing the yellow crime scene tape. He was glad to get away from the smell. Even dry, so much blood had a sickly sweet coppery scent that brought back the wrong kind of memories. Too many crime scenes where death had been violent and gory. Years of cleaning up the worst kinds of messes that people made of their lives and other lives. The woman in Queens who’d slashed her sleeping husband’s throat with a razor blade, then mutilated his nude body. The Lower East Side man who’d shot his wife’s lover, then three members of her family, then himself. So many years of that kind of thing. What had it done to him that he hadn’t noticed? Didn’t suspect?
And why did he miss it so?
What had made May leave him so s
oon after he’d been discredited and lost his livelihood? Had she doubted his innocence from the beginning? Or had she seen something in him that was beyond his awareness?
While he was waiting for the elevator, he examined his reflection in its polished steel door. He looked okay, he decided, with his fresh shave, white collar, and dark tie. A homicide cop on the job.
Except for the shield. There wasn’t one.
The elevator arrived with a muted thumping and strumming of cables.
When the gleaming door slid open, a uniformed cop Quinn knew as Mercer stepped out into the hall. A big, square-shouldered guy with squinty eyes and a ruddy complexion. Quinn had only been in the man’s company a few times, years ago, and wasn’t sure if he’d be recognized.
Mercer nodded to him and politely stepped aside so Quinn could enter the elevator. Quinn nodded back, studying Mercer’s eyes.
They were good cop’s eyes, neutral as Switzerland.
7
Marcy Graham absolutely and without a doubt had to try on the soft brown leather jacket, and that was what led to the problem.
She knew her husband, Ron, was arguing against buying the jacket not because he disliked it, but because he disliked paying for it. All this talk of it putting weight on her was absurd. Her image in the mirror of Tambien’s exclusive women’s shop confirmed it. The tapered cut of the three-quarter-length jacket made her look slender. Not that I have a weight problem. And the price was unbelievable. Half off because it was out of season.
But later in the years, when the weather was cooler, she could wear such a coat anywhere. What she liked about it was its simplicity. She could accessorize it, dress it up or down. With her blue eyes, her light brown hair, and her unblemished complexion, the soft color of the leather was just right.
“It makes you look ten pounds lighter,” whispered the salesclerk when Ron wandered away to deposit his chewing gum in a receptacle that had once been an ashtray. “Not that you need it, but still….”
Marcy nodded, not daring to answer, because Ron was already striding back to where she and the clerk were standing before the full-length mirrors that were angled so you could see three of yourself.
The salesclerk was a slight, handsome man in a blue chalk-striped suit of European cut. He had brown eyes, with long lashes, and black hair slicked back to a knot at the base of his neck. He also wore rings, gold and silver, on two fingers of each hand, and a dangling diamond earring. Marcy knew the earring and rings were enough for Ron not to like him.
“Look at yourself from all sides,” the salesclerk urged, nudging Marcy closer to the triptych mirrors. “The coat lends you a certain curvaciousness, doesn’t it?” He winked not at Marcy but at Ron.
“Don’t try including me in bullshitting your customers,” Ron said. He was smiling, but Marcy, and probably the salesclerk, knew he was serious.
The clerk smiled at Marcy. “It’s the truth, of course, about what the jacket does for you.”
“It’s a subjective thing,” Ron said.
“Or it’s the lines of the jacket complementing the lines of the woman. Or maybe the other way around.”
“You really think so?” Ron asked sarcastically. Marcy could see him getting angrier. On dangerous ground now. Close to losing his temper with this slight, effeminate man.
She shrugged and grinned in the mirror at the salesclerk. “I guess my husband doesn’t like it, so—”
“Ah! For some reason I thought he was a friend. Or perhaps your older brother.”
Ron glared at the clerk. “I’m not quite sure, but I believe I’ve been insulted.”
The clerk shrugged. “It certainly wasn’t intentional.”
“I believe it was.”
The salesclerk shrugged again, but this time there was a different and definite body language to it. A taunt.
Marcy thought he didn’t look so much like a harmless salesclerk now, perhaps gay, but not so effeminate. Not the sort of clerk you might expect to find in a semiswank shop like Tambien’s that—let’s face it—put on airs to jack up prices. His lean body appeared coiled and strong beneath the chalk-striped suit, and she noticed that his manicured hands were large for such a thin man, the backs of them heavily veined. Faded blue coloring, what might be part of a tattoo, peeked from beneath his right cuff. Marcy didn’t want to see those hands, with the rings, made into fists.
“Don’t push it, Ron, please,” she said, starting to unbutton the coat.
“Push it?” But he was looking at the clerk and not Marcy. Unlike Marcy, he didn’t seem to sense that the slender male-model type might be a dangerous man.
The clerk smiled. Though possibly fifty pounds lighter than the six-foot-one, two-hundred-pound Ron, he was obviously unafraid. The long-lashed brown eyes didn’t blink.
“Why not push it?” Ron said. “I don’t appreciate this guy’s attitude.”
“I apologize for anything you mistook as improper,” the clerk said, his smile turning superior and insincere. His teeth were perfectly even and very white.
Ron’s face was darkening. Marcy could see the purple vein near his temple start to throb, the way it did when he was about to lose control. Another customer, browsing nearby, a tall woman in designer slacks, a sleeveless blouse, and too much jewelry, glanced at them from the corner of a wide eye and hurried away on the plush carpet.
“Please, Ron, I’m taking the coat off.” Her fingers trembling, Marcy fumbled at the buttons. “I’ve decided I don’t want it.”
“Can I be of some help here?” a voice asked. A man who stood in a rooted way, as if he had authority, had drifted over to move between the clerk and Ron. He stood closer to Ron. He was short, bald, had a dark mustache, and was wearing a chalk-striped suit like the clerk’s, only his was chocolate brown instead of blue. “I’m the store manager.”
“I don’t think you will help,” Ron said, “but this jerk was coming on to my wife.”
Marcy shook her head. “For God’s sake, Ron!”
The salesclerk stood with his hands at his sides, perfectly calm. Almost amused. It occurred to Marcy that he might be one of those small men who felt compelled to pick on large men as a way of proving themselves. The kind of man who’d learned the hard way how to fight and was eager to back up his bravado. Showing off for the lady, but mostly for himself.
“You were flirting, Ira?” the manager asked, glancing at the clerk. His tone suggested he was astounded by the possibility.
“Of course not. If it appeared so, I certainly apologize.”
Marcy removed the coat, relieved to be out of it, and handed it to the clerk.
He gave her a little bow as he accepted the garment and extended a card to her with his free hand, smiling. “If you think about it and change your mind, I’m Ira.”
“She knows you’re Ira, and she won’t change her mind,” Ron said. “And you won’t change it for her.” He clutched Marcy’s elbow. “C’mon, Marcy. We’re outta here.”
Marcy let him lead her toward the door. She knew he felt he’d topped the clerk and was ready to leave while he was ahead. She was thankful for that. The situation was already embarrassing enough.
“Marcy’s a nice name,” she heard Ira remark softly behind them.
Ron seemed not to have heard, but she wondered if he had.
8
He stood in the doorway of a luggage shop across the street and watched Marcy Graham leave Fifth Federal Savings Bank, where she worked as a loan officer. She paused in front of the bank’s glass doors, set between phony stone pillars, and glanced up at the sky as if contemplating rain, then seemed to reject decisively the idea of going back inside for an umbrella and began walking.
He followed.
He knew her routes and her timetable by now, her haunts and habits. After work, she boarded the subway at a stop two blocks from Fifth Federal. He enjoyed watching her walk. She would stride down the block in her high heels, the warm breeze pressing her skirt against her thighs, her breasts and brown h
air bouncing with each step, and she would unhesitatingly enter the long, shadowed stairwell to the turnstiles.
It was a wonder to watch her descend the concrete steps, moving rapidly if there was no one in her way. Almost like a graceful, controlled near-tumble. His eyes took all of her in, the strength and looseness of her legs, the way her arms swung, her hair swayed, her hips switched, motion, countermotion, the rhythm of time and the cosmos. In some women there was everything.
She would take the train to within two blocks of her apartment building, then walk the rest of the way home, playing out her daily routine, locked in the worn pathways of her life. He knew routine made her feel secure. There was safety in repetition simply because there were no surprises; life was habit and redundancy all the way to the edges of her perception. What a comfort! How wise she was, yet didn’t know herself.
Sometimes he followed closely all the way from the bank, taking the same uptown train, even riding in the same car, watching her, imagining. In the gray world of the subway, they were both sometimes lucky enough to find seats. And more often than not, there were the usual subway creeps staring at a woman like Marcy. That meant she didn’t pay much attention to him, worrying about the silent watchers who so obviously wanted every part and morsel of her.
The pink and red of her, the hues of her flesh and hidden white purity of bone.
Not that Marcy had to worry about the creeps. She belonged to someone already, even if she didn’t yet know it.
He would follow her up to the multicolored surface from the drab subway stop, then down the street to her apartment in the building with the dirty stone facade. Then he’d cross the street and find a spot where he could stand out of the flow of pedestrian traffic and watch the Grahams’ apartment windows.
He would see one or the other of them pass from time to time, fleeting movement behind glass panes. Glimpses into another world in which he was only a ghost and she its brightest inhabitant.
