John Lutz Bundle (43 page)

The victim’s was a small, corner apartment that looked a lot neater than when Pearl had lived in it. For one thing, it was completely painted. Pearl had always been in the process of painting the place, never finishing. There were no newspapers or magazines strewn on the floor, and the furniture looked…well, arranged.

There was also a disturbing odor. Quinn had encountered it before, but not to this degree. So had Fedderman.

“Smells like a butcher shop,” Fedderman said. “Lots of fresh blood, fresh meat.”

“He is a butcher,” Quinn said.

“A real one, maybe.”

The thought had occurred to Quinn. “He’d have the skills, as well as the tools of his trade.”

There was a uniformed cop in the apartment, standing and staring out the window. He hadn’t turned around when Quinn and Fedderman entered. Now he did. He was a middle-aged guy with a gray military haircut, his cap in his hands, over his crotch. His face was so white Quinn thought the man might faint any second. Quinn and Fedderman flashed the shields Renz had provided, and the uniform pointed toward a short hall that Quinn knew led to the bathroom and only bedroom.

“Maybe you oughta sit down,” Quinn said.

“I can stand okay,” the cop said. Point of pride.

Quinn nodded and led the way down the hall. He and Fedderman both slipped latex gloves on their hands as they walked. Quinn was a little surprised by how effortless and automatic it was, an old task still familiar.

There was no way to prepare for what was in the bathroom. In the center of the tub, Ida Ingrahm’s head lay propped on its side on the stack of torso and limbs. Her damp brown hair had been smoothed back so her face was visible. Her eyes were open, darkened by blood from capillaries ruptured as she’d drowned, but they didn’t so much look dead as expectant. As if she’d been waiting for somebody to come into the bathroom. Maybe Quinn and Fedderman.

“Some sight,” said a voice behind them.

Quinn turned and saw Nift from the Medical Examiner’s office, not one of his favorite people. Nift was a pigeon-chested little guy with thick black hair that dangled in short bangs high on his bulging forehead. He had an imperious attitude, a smart mouth, and appeared to be strutting even when standing still. Always a meticulous dresser, he seemed to be dolling up even more for his work. Today he was wearing a black three-button suit, white shirt, and a black silk tie. Quinn thought he looked like Napoleon gussied up as a mortician.

“Some stench,” Fedderman said.

“Smells something like the morgue on a busy day,” Nift said. “I knew you guys were on the way, so I didn’t touch anything, just tippy-toed in and looked at the poor woman. I determined that she was dead.”

“Cut up like the others?” Fedderman asked.

“I wouldn’t know if she had a sense of humor,” Nift said.

“I might throw you into that tub with her,” Quinn said.

Nift stared at him. “I believe you just might, Captain.”

“Maybe you oughta give us a straight answer,” Fedderman said.

“As near as I can tell, without having moved the body parts, she seems to have been dissected in the same manner as the two previous victims. She also fits the killer’s type.”

“Now you’re doing detective work,” Quinn said.

Nift smiled. “My weakness. Too many TV cop shows, I suppose. But I really can’t tell you much more than the obvious until after the postmortem.” He shrugged. “Cut, hack, saw.”

“Drowned first,” Fedderman said.

“Yes, I can about guarantee you that. Just like the first two. And like with the first two, I doubt if there’ll be any indications of recent sexual activity.” He smiled. “Wanna take a closer look?”

“We’ll take your word for it,” Quinn said. “Was her hair pulled back from her face like that when you arrived?”

“Sure was. Just as the killer wanted you to find it. Or maybe it was simply a gentle gesture after the beheading.”

There was a flash behind them. The police photographer had arrived, armed with a digital camera about the size of a cigarette lighter. There were three techs beyond him, nosing around the living room for prints or stray hairs or dying messages or whatever. Quinn figured they wouldn’t find much, if anything, of use. This was a clean and careful killer they were hunting. Cleanliness and caution were deep in his methodology and would be essential in his psychology. The police profiler should be having a ball with this guy.

“I’ll finish my preliminary,” Nift said, “then get out of the way.”

Quinn and Fedderman moved aside so Nift could squeeze back into the almost sanitarily clean bathroom. Chromed faucet handles glittered. The ceramic tiles gleamed. Admirable.

Except for what was in the tub.

“Let’s go into the bedroom,” Quinn said.

Fedderman followed. “We’ll look for clues where it’s less crowded and the light’s better.”

Quinn was glad Fedderman was recovering his cop’s sense of humor that helped to keep him sane. Like Nift, maybe, only without the mean streak.

Fedderman knew why Quinn wanted to examine the bedroom—to get a better sense of Ida Ingrahm, who she was before she became victim number three.

The bedroom was neatly arranged, the bed still made. The room didn’t seem to have been touched by the crime except for the odor. Their bed had been against the other wall when Quinn and Pearl had slept here. He tried not to think about that.

Ida Ingrahm seemed to have fit the mold of thousands, maybe millions, of single women in New York. On her dresser was the framed family photo, a man and woman and two teenage girls, posed smiling in front of a lake ringed with trees that looked about to surrender their leaves to autumn. The females in the photo looked quite a bit alike. Quinn figured he was looking at Mom, Dad, Sis, and the future murder victim. There was nothing in the smiling faces of either of the daughters that portended an early, violent death.

Ida’s closet held an assortment of mix-and-match black clothing, a rack of shoes. Near the foot of the bed was a small TV on a white wicker stand. There was a bookshelf that held mostly self-help and diet books, a few paperback mysteries. On the lamp table next to the bed, a pair of glasses was folded atop a Stuart Kaminsky novel. Pearl used to read Kaminsky’s series about a cop named Lieberman, and Quinn wondered if she’d left behind the book when she moved out. It bothered him that the dead woman had read the same book as Pearl, maybe even turning down page corners the way Pearl did to keep her place. He went to the glasses and, careful not to touch anywhere that might obscure prints, examined the lenses. Single power and weak. They looked like drugstore reading glasses.

“Lots of shoes,” Fedderman said behind Quinn, still staring into the closet.

“Lots of women have lots of shoes,” Quinn said, glancing over at him. When he turned back, he saw something he hadn’t noticed before because it was mostly hidden behind the lamp base. A cell phone.

Maybe with speed dial numbers, information, a log of recent numbers called or received. Maybe with a recorder, a calculator, a digital camera with a stored photo of the killer. Well, who knew, these days? It looked like an ordinary cell phone, but who could tell? Quinn couldn’t keep up with technology.

He left the bedroom and went halfway down the hall, then summoned one of the techs, a bright looking young guy with dark-rimmed glasses and a bow tie. Quinn had always thought that men who wore bow ties were a separate breed, understood only by themselves. Probably had a secret handshake.

Like Quinn and Fedderman, the bow-tied tech was wearing white evidence gloves. Unlike Quinn and Fedderman, he was under thirty and would understand cell phone technology.

“Do what you want with this so we can check out any information stored,” Quinn said, pointing to the phone.

The tech nudged the phone with a gloved fingertip, then began dusting for prints.

After a few seconds, he looked up at Quinn, smiling. “Something you should know about this phone, sir.”

Quinn liked it when a tech called him “sir.” Very rare. He put it down to youth. “There something different about it?”

“Yeah.”

What happened to “sir”?

The tech carefully lifted the phone between thumb and middle finger, then lightly squeezed. It began to buzz.

Quinn was just about to tell the tech to let him answer the phone, when the buzzing stopped.

“It’s not a phone, sir. Only looks like one. It’s a vibrator.”

“That’s to let you know you got a call when you don’t want people to hear it ring,” Fedderman said.

“It’s not a phone. Really, it’s a vibrator.”

“Huh?” Fedderman said, finally getting it, interested.

The kid pushed another button and the buzzing got louder. The little cell phone became a blur.

“Whoa!” Fedderman said.

Quinn didn’t know what to say.

“It’s not the kind of vibrator you’d use on your sore back,” the tech said. He was still smiling, but looking thoughtful. “I guess it’s so women can carry it around, maybe use it when they travel, and it won’t draw attention and embarrass them if security or customs root through their luggage.”

“What a great idea,” Fedderman said.

The tech turned off the mock phone and placed it back down exactly in its original position. “I think I know whose prints’ll be all over this for everyone to see.”

“She’s beyond embarrassment,” Quinn said.

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” demanded a woman’s voice.

Startled, all three men turned to look.

Pearl.

“Who’s guarding the bank?” Fedderman asked, after Pearl had been filled in and had looked around the apartment. They were outside on West Eighty-second, standing in the shade near the building’s concrete stoop.

“Someone else,” Pearl said. “I’m on a leave of absence.”

Quinn looked closely at her. She was simply Pearl. Compact, buxom, and beautiful. She had on her usual deep red lipstick today, so stark against her pale complexion that her generous mouth seemed to have been painted on by some manic, inspired artist. With her large dark eyes, perfect white teeth, black hair, she was so vivid she often reminded Quinn of some kind of cartoon character. But she was real. Quinn knew she was real.

“Renz call you?” he asked.

“Even before he called you.”

“I thought you weren’t interested in this case.”

“This sick asshole killed somebody in my old apartment. Somebody who might just as easily have been me. That makes it personal.”

“Also makes it coincidental,” Fedderman said.

“Doesn’t it, though?” Pearl said.

A brisk summer breeze kicked up and moved a crumpled white takeout bag along the sidewalk. Quinn stood his ground, merely lifting a foot to let the bag pass and continue along the pavement.

“We need you, Pearl,” Fedderman said.

She smiled. “Thanks, Feds.”

“You one of us again, Pearl?” Quinn asked.

“The smart one,” she said.

They spent the next several hours talking to Ida’s neighbors, some of whom remembered Pearl. No one had seen or heard anything unusual. Those who knew Ida Ingrahm said she was quiet, and worked as some kind of artist or graphic designer at a company in midtown. She rode the subway back and forth to work.

All the detective team’s time and effort left them right back where they’d started hours ago, standing on the sidewalk just outside the building. Ida Ingrahm’s remains had long since been removed, and the crime scene unit had pulled out. A uniform remained in the hall outside the apartment, with its door yellow-taped, and would be relieved in a few hours by another cop who would remain there all night. Sometimes criminals really did return to the scene of the crime. Especially if they forgot something incriminating.

Quinn unwrapped a Cuban cigar and lit it. The butcher shop stench had stayed with him and become taste. The acrid scent of burning tobacco helped. A few people walking past on the sidewalk glared at him as he exhaled a large puff of smoke.
So arrest me.
Neither Pearl nor Fedderman complained; they’d been upstairs like Quinn. It seemed to them that the entire building smelled like a slaughterhouse, but Ida’s neighbors didn’t seem to notice. Maybe the death stench had grown on them slowly, and they became accustomed to it.

Or maybe it was mental. The other tenants hadn’t been in Ida’s apartment to bid her farewell.

Ida nude. A three-dimensional Picasso. In pieces like a disconnected puzzle doll, chalk white and eerily pure in her drained bathtub.

Ida clean.

Her sins washed away?

Quinn knew better, but he wished for Ida that it worked that way. He felt an overbearing sadness not only for her but for himself and the entire human race.

The things we do to each other…

“You cab over here?” he asked Pearl.

Pearl nodded. Did a thing with her lips so she could take in some secondhand smoke.

“That’s our unmarked across the street,” Quinn said.