John Lutz Bundle (42 page)

“Is this where you cross yourself?” Quinn asked.

“Oh, I don’t blame you for being skeptical, keeping in mind your devious nature and coarse cynicism.” Renz bowed his head, closed his eyes, and for a second Quinn thought he actually might cross himself.

“You do compassion really well.”

Renz gave him a sad and sickly smile. “We’re gonna find out how well you do it.”

When Renz was gone, Quinn settled back in his chair to finish his cigar before he phoned Pearl and Fedderman.

He glanced over at the print of ducks flying in a tight V formation against a vivid sunset and decided he still liked it.

The cigar was only half gone when he picked up the phone.

“Something’s different,” Pearl said.

“You took a lot of the furniture with you,” Quinn said. “I had to move a few things around.” He was seated in his leather armchair, not smoking a cigar.

Pearl was in the chair she used to sit in all the time, but it was on the other side of the room now. She had on jeans and a jacket this morning, Saturday, when the bank was closed. Her hair was blacker than anything Quinn had ever seen. Raven-colored, he guessed they called it. Not much makeup, if any, but still her dark eyes and lips were in sharp contrast to her pale skin. “You redecorated,” she said.

“More like made do.”

“I smell cigar smoke, Quinn.”

“I have one infrequently.”

“Not good for you.”

You not being here isn’t good for me.
“I stay within limits.”

“Not like you.” She sat back and smiled with her large, perfectly aligned, very white teeth. “So what did you want to see me about?”

“Harley Renz came by yesterday and talked to me.”

Her smile disappeared. “He still such an asshole?”

“More than ever. I was thinking he should be our boss again.”

Pearl gave him an odd look, as if he’d just spoken in an unfamiliar language.

“That’s not gonna happen,” she said. “But go ahead, try to talk me into it.”

He told her what Renz had said, watching her closely as he described what the killer had done to his victims. The odd look never completely left her face.

“What if I say I want no part of this?” she asked, when he was finished.

“I forge ahead with Fedderman. He wasn’t cut out for golf in Florida. Last time I talked to him on the phone he said the game was driving him crazy.”

“And you think he’ll throw away his irons and woods and fly up here and join forces with you and Renz to hunt down a serial killer?”

“That’s his real game,” Quinn said, “not bogies and birdies. It’s yours, too. Not standing around Fourth National—”

“Fifth.”

“—with a gun you’ll never fire.”

“And never want to fire. Fedderman will tell you exactly what I’m going to tell you.”

“His wife left him, you know.”

“I know. Last year.”

“He’s lonely.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Pearl looked away from him. “Don’t try that crap with me, Quinn.”

“Well, think about it before you give me a definite answer.”

“Okay. I’ve thought about it. Answer’s no. There’s a time for everything, Quinn, and the time for us to track a killer who slices and dices his victims is way past.”

“You have to feel for those women.”

She let out a long sigh, he thought a bit dramatically. “Feeling. That’s something else I’m past.”

“Pearl—”

“I’m content, Quinn. Screw happiness. Contentment is enough. I get up and get through my days in a pleasant enough way, do my chores, live my life, not pulled this way and that like a…I don’t know what.”

“Like you were with me?”

“Yeah. Like that. I need to be self-sufficient, Quinn. So do you. That’s why we didn’t make it together. Why we shouldn’t work together. I want no part of Renz’s operation.”

“Sounds almost final.”

She smiled and stood up from her chair, then walked over and leaned down so she could kiss his forehead. “What a hard case you are, Quinn.”

“You, too.”

She didn’t deny it.

He watched her walk out the door.

Before calling Fedderman in Florida, Quinn fired up a cigar and sat down at the desk in the spare bedroom that had become his den.

He leaned back and listened to the phone ringing in what was probably an empty condo in Boca something or other, Fedderman being out on the golf course, dazed and chasing a little white ball in the sun.

He was about to hang up when Fedderman picked up.

“Quinn?”

“How’d you know, Feds?”

“Caller ID. There’s a widow I’m trying to avoid.” Fedderman had been alone since his wife left. Their grown kids had moved out several years before. If Quinn remembered right, the girl was working in Philadelphia; her brother was one of those people who never wanted to leave college and was away somewhere on a scholarship working on yet another degree.

Quinn propped his cigar in the square glass ashtray on the desk corner. The ashtray was from the old Biltmore Hotel, maybe a collector’s item. “I thought you’d be out on the golf course.”

“I gave up golf. It was driving me insane. Now I’m deep-sea fishing, but that’s driving me nuts, too. You ever see the shit you pull out of the ocean? Most of it doesn’t even look like fish.”

“Harley Renz came to see me yesterday.”

“He still such an asshole?”

“That’s what Pearl asked. The answer’s yes.”

“How is Pearl? You two still—?”

“We’re not together. She’s still Pearl.”

“Hmm. Who did the leaving?”

“Pearl.”

“Hmm. So what’d Renz want?”

Quinn told him.

“I’m in,” Fedderman said.

Quinn was surprised by how quickly the answer had come. He’d thought Fedderman liked at least some part of retirement and would prefer it to looking at dead bodies and maybe being shot at.

“So when can I expect you?” Quinn asked.

“Soon as I can catch a flight to New York. That’s the thing about condo living, you can turn the key in the lock and leave. Don’t have to worry about the weeds taking over the lawn. I’m looking forward to seeing you and Pearl.”

“Pearl’s not in.”

“You serious?” Fedderman sounded amazed.

“She said she’s happy being a bank guard.”

“Banks don’t need guards. She knows that. Time I get to New York she’ll have changed her mind.”

“Pearl doesn’t change her mind.”

“She did about you.”

Quinn felt a stab of annoyance. On the other hand, this was what he liked about Fedderman. They’d worked together a long time and were completely honest with each other. Fedderman had a way of driving to the truth and to hell with the cost.

“I’ll call you when I get into town,” Fedderman said. “Meantime, you work on Pearl.”

He hung up before Quinn could reply.

Quinn replaced the receiver in its cradle and picked up his cigar from the ashtray on the desk. It had gone out. He relit it and settled back in his chair, thinking about what Fedderman had said. Thinking about Pearl. He’d worked with her, slept with her, lived with her, knew her.

Pearl doesn’t change her mind.

He watched the smoke rise like a spirit and catch a draft up near the ceiling.

Pearl doesn’t change her mind back.

Ida Ingrahm had a date.

Normally she wouldn’t have made one with somebody she’d just met in a bar, but Jeff was different.

No,
really
different.

Seated at her mirror in her West Side apartment, she smiled at her reflection. Not
un
attractive, she thought. Full face with dark brown hair worn in bangs that made it look fuller. Not fat, mind you. And the rest of her was slim, except she didn’t have much of a waist. Small breasts, legs okay. Especially with the right shoes.

Why do I have to appraise myself like this?

Ida knew the answer. Once they’d slept with her, men tended not to stick around. And she was way, way over thirty now. On the slide.

Time to panic?

She gave her reflection a brighter smile and decided, not yet. Hope lived. It wasn’t that she wanted to get married. A lasting relationship was her goal. Modest enough, she thought. She saw other people achieve them. Meanwhile, life wasn’t so terrible.

She liked her job as graphic designer for Higher Corporate Image, a company that produced promotional and motivational material for retail chains. It paid on the low side, if you didn’t figure bonuses that were no sure thing, but there was a future. There was no glass ceiling at HCI. She could see her life ten years out, and it was okay, and would be better than okay if she had somebody steady. Somebody who cared about her.

She could learn to care about him.

I could learn
…
Stupid attitude.

Her smile faded, and for an instant her blue eyes did flash panic. Perhaps that was her problem, why men left her; her desperation shone through. Thirty-eight and alone in New York—scary. Then again, she knew there were millions of unhappy Midwestern housewives who’d give up their drudge lives in a New York minute for her situation.

Independence! Wa-hoo!
She told herself,
Quit being such a wimp.

She put on a sapphire pendant with a long silver chain that formed a V so her neck looked longer, her face thinner. Then she unfastened the top button of her blouse to reveal a suggestion of cleavage that wasn’t there.

She wasn’t a wimp. She was doing just fine, sticking in the big city, date with a guy like Jeff, living the life unlike the one she would have led back in Fort Taynor, Arkansas.

She’d thought she’d gotten rid of her southern accent completely, but Jeff had picked up on it right away and said he found it charming. Some of the other women in Loiter, the lounge where a crowd younger than Ida hung out, had glanced with envy at her, seeing her with Jeff. He was easily the best-looking man in the place, and he hadn’t come in with a bunch of leering buddies whose goal for the evening was to score. He was nicely dressed in a dark blue suit that looked expensive. He was even the kind of guy who wore cuff links.

Nobody back in Fort Taynor wore cuff links.

She fumbled trying to fasten the clasp on her knockoff retro wristwatch, and almost dropped it when the intercom buzzed.

Ida squinted at the watch’s tiny face. It was difficult to make out the time without her reading glasses.

Almost seven o’clock. Jeff was early. If it was Jeff.

She gave a final try to engage the miniature latch of the watch’s silver-plated chain, and smiled in surprise when she was successful. A good omen? She hesitated, considering slipping into her high-heel pumps, then padded in her nylon feet toward the intercom. If it was Jeff, she’d have enough time to put on her shoes while he was coming upstairs.

A final glance in the mirror behind the sofa.

She winked at herself and whispered, “Hot!” Letting her tongue show.

Believing it a little.

As she moved toward the intercom, her gaze roamed around the tiny apartment, hoping it was neat enough, clean enough.

Being judged. Always being judged.

She pressed the button and tried to sound casual and sexy. “Who’s there?”

“Jeff Davis.”

Ida decided to hold her silence and simply buzz him in. Not make herself seem too interested and available. Too eager.

Be cool. Like he is.

As she struggled into her shoes that for some reason seemed too small, she imagined him standing in the elevator, rising to her floor.

One of her toenails that needed trimming cut painfully into the toe next to it.

Damn it! Feet swollen again. Should have taken a water pill.

The left shoe wasn’t completely on, and she almost turned an ankle, as she hurried to answer his knock.

Renz was true to his word. Always a bad sign.

He’d found them office space on West Seventy-ninth Street, not far from the two-oh precinct on West Eighty-second. It had been used as a child welfare reporting center until the city budget had forced its closure. On one side of the old brick building was a dental clinic, Nothing but the Tooth. Renz had laughed about that one over the phone when he called to send Quinn to the address, thinking it a riot that a cop shop should share the building with a dentist with a sense of humor. Quinn didn’t think dentists should joke about their work.

The entrances to the two office suites faced each other across a cracked concrete stoop, three steps up from the sidewalk. Quinn and Fedderman didn’t know what the dentist’s digs looked like, but their “suite” consisted of two adjoining rooms and a half bath. Gluts of truncated cable and smaller wiring protruded like weird high-tech vegetables out of the hardwood floor, Quinn guessed for phones and computers. Ghastly illumination was provided by dangling flourescent fixtures.

“We’ll get you desks and stuff tomorrow,” Renz had assured Quinn.

That had been two days ago. Quinn and Fedderman were still working out of Quinn’s apartment, or sometimes the claustrophobic room Fedderman had rented in a residence hotel in the Nineties.

They were in Quinn’s den today, the contents of the murder files arranged in something like chronological order before them on the floor. Quinn was seated in his desk chair, which he’d rolled out from behind the desk, leaning out over the mess on the carpet with his elbows on his knees, gazing down like God at His miscreants. Fedderman was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He’d become almost bald on top, his graying hair too long on the sides and curling over his ears. His pants were wrinkled, and his brown suit coat was wadded in a chair. Fedderman had no respect for clothes. They didn’t like him, either. He was tall and narrow-shouldered, and nothing seemed to fit his thin, awkward body, with the potbelly and abnormally long arms.

“What we know,” Quinn said, “is both victims were brunettes, in their thirties, attractive though not raving beauties. They both were drowned before they were butchered. No signs of sexual activity. No semen found in the bodies or anywhere at the scenes.”

“Probably untaped after death,” Fedderman said. “He wouldn’t want them splashing all over the place in the bathtub while he was holding them under.”

“And he took the used tape with him.”

“Neatnik,” Fedderman said.

“Trauma to the heads of both victims before death.”

Fedderman nodded and nudged one of the morgue shots with the unpolished toe of his brown shoe. “Sequences probably the same. No indications of forced entry into either apartment. So he’s let in, whaps them in the head, and undresses them and tapes them up while they’re unconscious. Then he carries them into the bathroom and places them in the tub. He makes sure the stopper’s engaged and turns on the water.”

“That’s probably when they come to,” Quinn said.

Fedderman thought about that. “Yeah, the cold water. Then they realize where they are, the fix they’re in. Jesus!”

“When the water’s high enough, he turns it off and drowns them,” Quinn said.

“Thank God for that, considering what comes next.”

“He wouldn’t let them just sit there and drown. Their heads would be too high, anyway, and he wouldn’t want them struggling, even taped tight like they were. They’d still be able to splash around some. Maybe work loose the tape over their mouths and make some noise.”

“So he holds them under,” Fedderman said.

“Then, when they’re dead, he removes the tape and uses the tools he’s brought with him to start carving.”

“Ignores the knives in the kitchen?”

“Has so far.”

“Must have brought his tools in a box or a bag of some sort.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe somebody noticed. Something to check.”

“Gets together all his cleaning agents first,” Fedderman said. “Before he starts to carve. No blood in the kitchen. None in the cabinets where the stuff would have been kept.”

“Yeah, sounds right. He uses the shower curtain to protect the floor, so he won’t be walking or kneeling in blood while he’s…” Quinn paused and gave his cigar a George Burns look, even the faint smile. It occurred to him how good it felt to be having one of these give-and-take conversations with Fedderman again, homing in on the facts, or at least the hypothesis, and nudging ideas alive. “No, Feds, he’s got to undress. He’d be working nude, even before he drowns them. Wouldn’t want to get his clothes wet. Somebody might notice when he leaves.”

Fedderman nodded. “Shower curtain keeps whatever mess there is outside the tub contained. I’d say he opens up his victims and sits there a while and lets them bleed out in the tub, much as possible without a heartbeat, then washes the blood down the drain and begins his carving. Probably just gets residue blood on his hands and arms, maybe upper body; easy to wash off, while he’s cleaning the body parts.”

“Then he cleans his tools.”

“After stacking the severed body parts in the tub.” Fedderman looked disgusted, maybe a little scared, his features as mismatched as his clothes. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into, Quinn?”

“Nothing we haven’t been in before.”

Or is it?

“Body parts stacked exactly the same way,” Quinn said, pressing on, “in the same order.”

“And everything washed so clean,” Fedderman said. “Like maybe he was trying to wash away his sins.”

Take me to the river…
Quinn sat back in his chair. “It’s still too early to get inside this one’s head. We can’t make any assumptions. Other than he’s one sick cookie, and he’s got a thing about brunettes.”

“Lots of us have a thing about brunettes.”

“I talked to the ME,” Quinn said. “Near as he could make out, sharp knives, and probably a cleaver or hatchet of some kind, were used to disassemble these women. But some body parts would be too difficult to remove with a knife or cleaver. The severed large bone ends suggest a saw was used. Because of the finely serrated blade, most likely a power saw.”

“Dangerous to use one of those around water, even a portable with a battery. Might get your ass electrocuted.”

“Still, my guess is he used a portable. They’re quieter. And they make them plenty powerful enough for the job now. He’d be using it after the water was gone from the tub, and most of the blood and other body fluids were drained from his victims.”

“Like in a butcher shop.” Fedderman made his disgusted face again.

“Exactly like, Feds. He did butcher them.” Quinn sighed and let his gaze roam over the photographs, statements, and reports arranged on the carpet. “Apparently the two victims didn’t know each other and had no friends or acquaintances in common.”

“That’s ground we can go over again,” Fedderman said. “They might have frequented the same bar or restaurant, shopped at the same store.”

“One lived on the East Side,” Quinn pointed out, “one on the West.”

“They had one thing in common, anyway. The killer.”

“Yeah, they—”

The phone rang, interrupting Quinn.

He scooted with his feet so his chair rolled closer to the desk, then stretched out an arm and lifted the black plastic receiver. Said, “Quinn.”

After a while: “Uh-huh.” He rolled the chair even closer so he could reach a pen and make a note on a pad on the desk corner. “You sure about the address?”

Apparently, whoever had called was sure.

“We’re leaving now,” Quinn said, and hung up.

Fedderman knew better than to try a guess at what the conversation was about. Quinn was always the same on the phone, calm, almost mechanical. He’d tell Fedderman when he was ready.

“Better straighten your tie, Feds,” Quinn said, standing up from his chair. “That was Renz. We’ve got a third victim, woman named Ida Ingrahm, 197 West Eighty-second Street, apartment six-B.”

Fedderman jotted down the name and address in his own note pad. “Not far from here.” He stood up slowly, unfolding in mismatched sections, gave his tie a tug, and shrugged into his wrinkled suit coat.

He pulled down his right shirtsleeve and rebuttoned its cuff. Something about the way he wrote, or maybe the cheap shirts he wore, made his right cuff button always come undone. He was adjusting the baggy coat so his shoulder holster didn’t show, when he suddenly stopped and stared at Quinn.

“You positive about that location?”

“I had Renz repeat it,” Quinn said. “Pearl’s old address.”