Mister X (6 page)

After entering her apartment, Mary Bakehouse engaged the dead-bolt lock and fastened the chain. She draped the gray blazer she’d been wearing (an essential part of her interview outfit) over a hanger in the closet, then stepped out of her high-heeled pumps.

Mary was returning from three fruitless job interviews. She’d been told after each that they might call her, but she knew better. She had received no callbacks. Nothing had panned out. The economy. That was her problem, she was assured by well-fed men and annoyingly lean, suited women. The bad economy was making jobs scarce and competition for those jobs fierce. “You almost have to sleep with someone,” a greyhound of a woman who’d been waiting with Mary to be interviewed had confided to her in a whisper.

Not that
, Mary thought. She’d return to small-town life and small ambitions before engaging in thinly disguised prostitution.

She changed into jeans and a loose-fitting blue T-shirt lettered
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
, advertising one of the group’s concerts from two years ago in Tulsa. She’d bought it cheap and on impulse from a street vendor, figuring it matched her mood.

Mary poured herself a glass of iced tea from the plastic pitcher she kept in the refrigerator. She carried the glass into the living room and slumped on the sofa, automatically reaching for the remote.

She watched cable news for a while and didn’t in the slightest feel buoyed by it. Switched it off.

Misery doesn’t really love company.

After staring at the opposite wall for a few minutes, she got up and went back into the kitchen and placed her half-empty glass on the sink counter. Her thirst was slaked, but now she was hungry. Lunch had been a street vendor’s pretzel and diet soda, so an early supper was in order.

There’s nothing in the fridge.

The deli again.

A glance out the window told her that dusk had moved in, and the drizzle that had started just as she’d arrived at her apartment building had stopped. Playing it safe, she got an umbrella with a telescoping handle from the closet and carried it as she left the apartment. It had rained once today; it could rain again.

The deli was only two blocks away and around the corner. As she walked she decided to have the orange chicken again. It was the best thing they had for takeout, so why not eat it two evenings in a row?

She picked up her pace. She could almost smell the narrow takeout buffet that ran down the center of the diner.

Nose like a beagle.

When she was in the brightly lit deli she felt better. She spooned some of the orange chicken from its heated metal pot into a white foam takeout container, then some white rice. She thought about buying a
Daily News
when she checked out at the register, then decided she shouldn’t spend the money and left the newspaper lying in its rack. Next to it was the last
City Beat,
one of several smaller New York papers that competed in a city hooked on information. It was a giveaway that made money from advertising space, including personal ads. Mary scanned the personals sometimes and let her imagination roam, but she was a long way from calling any of the numbers.

She picked up the tabloid-style paper and slid it into the bag with the takeout container and unopened bottle of soda.

Something didn’t feel right to Mary as she was walking home from the deli. She wasn’t sure why she was uneasy, but she picked up her pace.

It didn’t take her long to reach her building. Or to ride the elevator up to her floor and lock herself inside her apartment.

She leaned with her back against the door and felt better. She was home. Safe from whatever was out
there.

She drew a deep breath and picked up a peculiar odor. Not of tobacco smoke. Something else. Faint but persistent, and definitely
not
the orange chicken

More like stale perspiration.

Urine.

The man from the subway!

She reined in her fear and made herself think. What was she going to do? Go back outside where there was more danger? Then what? Go to the police? Tell them she thought someone was in her apartment because she’d smelled an unfamiliar odor?

Sure, they’d believe her and send all units.

She sniffed the air again and detected no odor other than the food from the foam takeout container.

My imagination?

Surely. Must have been. Must!

She shut her mind to the faint odor that she
might
have smelled and moved away from the door and deeper into the living room.

She drew a deep breath and felt better.

Fear had to be faced. And, damn it, she could face it!

Mary placed the foam container on the coffee table and willed her fear-numbed legs to take her where she wanted to go. Where she knew she
must
go.

She made herself look everywhere in the small apartment. Under the bed, in the closets, behind the closed shower curtain. As she flung the plastic curtain aside, the murder score from the movie
Psycho
screeched through her mind, almost making her smile. She let the curtain fall back into place. Not so afraid now.

There’s no one here. Just me and my overactive imagination. Picture this viewed from above, like in a Hitchcock movie—a foreshortened, fearful woman scurrying about in a maze of cubicles, peeking here, peering there. It’s almost laughable.

There were a few more places to look. Extremely unlikely hiding places. Mary decided not to explore them. She told herself she was no longer so afraid that she had to look everywhere in the apartment.

I’ve made enough of a fool of myself.

He was in the living room.

Quinn figured he’d better call Renz back. If this investigation was going to stop, and it turned out it shouldn’t have, he wanted to make it clear that it was going to be the albatross around Renz’s neck.

“Which investigation do you want me to stop?” Quinn asked Renz, on the phone in the Lotus Diner. He turned his body in toward the wall, in case Thel, still over by his booth, might be eavesdropping as she figured up his check. “The one with the dog that ran away with the clues?”

“That one sounds interesting,” Renz said, “but I think we both know I’m talking about the Carver murders.”

“Carver murders…is that the one with the guy who raped and sliced up his victims?”

“See, you
do
know.”

“Was a long time ago.”

“It’d seem like yesterday if you were one of the victims. If they’d had any tomorrows.”

“Why would you want us to back away from that one, Harley? It must be in the NYPD cold-case files.”

But Quinn knew why. The politically attuned Renz, who at the time of the Carver murders had been a police captain overseeing the investigation, didn’t want one of his notable unsolved cases dredged up from the past to bedevil him in the present and future.

“There’s been enough human suffering over those murders,” Renz said. “The families should be left alone.”

“My impression is that the families would still like to see the killer found and brought to trial.”

“Yeah, yeah. Closure and all that.” Sensitive Harley. “We both know what the families really want is for us to kill the bastard.”

“That, too,” Quinn said. “What
you
really
don’t
want is for somebody to break this case, after you and the rest of the NYPD and your political hacks worked the publicity pump and made it bigger than Son of Sam and then failed to get anywhere with it.”

“How cruel and direct,” Renz said. “And accurate. Right now I’m especially vulnerable, with the wolves after my job. My political enemies within the department are breathing hot air down my neck. That prick Nobbler would love to have a big unsolved case that happened during my tenure as police captain to use against me. He’d use it to nail me to the cross.” Nobbler was Captain Wes Nobbler, an NYPD bureaucratic climber with apparatchiks throughout the department. Nobbler was almost as cynical and ambitious as Renz.

“Always political reasons,” Quinn said. Political infighting was one of the main reasons he was no longer with the NYPD.

“Everything’s political.”

Like having a maniac sit on your chest and slice off your nipples.

“Not everything, Harley.”

“Don’t stand on principle here, Quinn. There are plenty of people in and out of the NYPD who don’t want the Carver case reactivated and will do whatever’s necessary to keep it where it belongs—in the past. I’m talking powerful people, Quinn.”

“Like you?”

“Like me. Be glad I’m your friend. Listen to me on this one.”

“How did you know I was on this case, Harley?”

“Get serious. I’m the goddamned police commissioner, and I didn’t inherit the position. I came up out of the streets just like you did, only I rose higher because I was more realistic. I understood the realities of the job. I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere in this city.”

“I owe something to my client,” Quinn said.

“You owe your client jack shit. You owe something to yourself. The idea is to stop this train before it builds up steam and the media notice the smoke. If you don’t help do that you might wind up under the wheels.”

“Along with you.”

“Naw, I know the engineer. I might even
become
the engineer.”

“These railroad metaphors are getting on my nerves. Can we try the airlines?”

“No. Let’s keep the airlines grounded and speak plainly: Drop the Carver investigation or you’ll regret it. Whether I regret it too shouldn’t make any difference to you. Think about yourself instead of your dreamland ethics. Give your client her money back, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“How do you know it’s a she?”

“You and your other two monkeys have talked to people, and we’ve talked to the same people. Didn’t it occur to you some of those victims’ families might contact us after you stomped all over their peace and well-being and reminded them of their grief?”

It had occurred to Quinn, only he doubted that Pearl or Fedderman had mentioned the identity of their client. And he was sure he hadn’t. It was possible that Renz was keeping a loose tail on Quinn and his detectives, even possible that a search without a warrant had been done at the office. Quinn made a mental note to be more careful locking up, and to make sure the office computers hadn’t been violated.

“It’s the twin sister,” Renz said. “Full of all that psychic bullshit about twins being so close they can read each other’s thoughts even if one of them’s dead.” Renz made a mock shivering sound. “Spooky, spooky. Take my advice and return the bitch’s retainer, tell her it’s no use. Once this shit gets into the news it’ll be too late. The River Styx’ll be crossed.”

“I think you mean the Rubicon,” Quinn said. “That’s the river you cross when you can’t turn back. The Styx is the river you cross when you’re dead.”

“Never mind that. Can I be sure you got my message?”

“Sure, Harley. I’ll sleep on it.”

“That’ll have to be good enough for now,” Renz said. “But let me know early tomorrow morning so I can be sure. Not that you got a choice, but you’re a stubborn bastard.”

“I’ll call you.”

“I’ll be waiting. And Quinn, I know my rivers.”

Mary attempted to scream, but the sight of the man from the subway right there, in her apartment, turned her throat to stone. She couldn’t breathe, much less scream.

And he
was
the subway man. The same wrinkled, soiled clothing. The same baseball cap with its bill worn low so he seemed to be staring at her with half eyes. The same bristly beard stubble. The same horrible, frightening stench of stale sweat and urine. Of the street. Of everything about New York that was raw and dangerous.

He seemed as shocked as Mary for a moment; as if he could hardly comprehend finding her in her own apartment. It was as if
she’d
surprised and frightened
him.
As if
she
didn’t belong.

He actually smiled. His teeth were crooked and yellow, one of the upper incisors broken half off. As he stared at her, he ran his tongue over his lower lip.

He bent low at the waist and removed something from just inside his pants cuff. When he straightened up, Mary saw that he was holding a knife with a long, thin blade. A boning knife, she knew. She had one something like it in her own kitchen drawer.

Was
it her knife?

No. Hers had a wooden handle. The handle on this knife—what she could see of it inside the man’s hand—was steel, like the blade.

Mary inhaled again to scream, and the man moved quickly toward her. It was all so fast, as if film frames had been skipped. Suddenly his forearm was pressed vertically against her upper body, between her breasts. It was the arm that held the knife, and she could feel the cold steel of the blade against her throat. The knife point probed eagerly beneath her jaw, not quite breaking through flesh. If he pushed upward the knife would go into her mouth, through her tongue and the roof of her mouth, into her brain. She could imagine it. Could almost
feel
it.

Mary was still too paralyzed with fear to scream. She felt her bladder release and the warmth of her urine trickling down her legs.

The man with the knife became aware of her mixture of terror and humiliation, and his smile broadened. She was his entertainment, and she was performing well, his smile said. He wasn’t tall and didn’t seem particularly muscular, but Mary could feel his strength like a current as he moved her a step backward with a shifting of his slender but powerful arm.

Any second he might use the knife.

She managed to make a few gasping, hoarse noises, almost like a bagpipe bellowing, but muted. She had never known such fear was possible.

Leaning his body weight into her, he walked her backward, through the living room, down the short hall to her bedroom. Her entire body was trembling as if electric shocks were running through it.

The bed! Once I’m on the bed I’m lost!

Without warning he shoved her hard, and she staggered backward, catching her heel on the carpet, losing her balance.

She was on her back on the hard wood floor before she knew what had happened, and the back of her head ached as if her skull had fractured in a thousand fragments.

He straddled her, seated on her stomach, waving the knife before her eyes so she’d be sure to see it.

He clutched the front of her blouse and ripped it away, sending buttons flying. She wasn’t wearing a bra. With his free hand he clamped her nipple between thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard.

Then his weight was lifted from her, and she could breathe easier.

Through her pain and dizziness Mary realized she was looking up at the man’s back, at the dark crescents of perspiration stains on his shirt beneath his armpits. She watched him move quickly toward her bedroom window, knowing as she did so that the air was different in the room. Warmer and more humid.

The window’s open. I left it unlocked, and now it’s open.

She shifted her gaze and saw that she was right. He’d left the window open where he’d gained entrance from the fire escape.

He looked back at her, and their gazes locked. His unblinking eyes were hypnotic. Snake to mongoose.

With a surprising grace and confidence he let himself out through the window, moving backward and not taking his sullen, greedy eyes from her. Beneath the half-moon eyes was the broken-toothed grin, as if he had her completely in his power and knew every evil thing about her, all the secrets of her body.

She was his for the taking, that grin said. And when he was ready, he would take.

Mary understood that and knew she was helpless to do anything about it.

Still lying on her back, she managed to prop herself up on her elbows and watch the man outside the window. He turned away from her, and began his descent on the black iron fire escape. She could barely hear the leather-on-metal scraping of his shoes as he scrambled down and away from her. She was safer with each of his hurried steps.

She dropped so she was flat on her back again and lay silently for a while, then rolled onto her side. When she tried to stand up her headache exploded behind her eyes, and she sat down on the floor near the bed.

Using the mattress to lean against, she finally managed to pull herself up to where she was sitting hunched over on the bed. She stretched out her hand and without looking found the phone on the nightstand, dragged the receiver from its cradle, and held it in her lap. She pressed it between her thighs so it wouldn’t drop to the floor. Her head flared with pain again as she turned slightly and focused her bleary vision on the base unit. She pecked out nine-one-one on the keypad.

Her voice was strangled, but she was sure she’d included her address in her rambling, choking conversation with the 911 operator.

Mary heard herself begin to sob. Her body shuddered, and she leaned back into deeper and deeper darkness.

There was a clock by the phone. Though it had seemed like seconds, she knew that fifteen minutes had passed and the police were pounding on her door.