John Lutz Bundle (139 page)

Black Lake, Missouri, 1986

The old Chevy pickup was dented and rusty, but it was all determination as it snarled and rattled over the rough and uneven dirt drive leading to the dilapidated farmhouse and outbuildings.

During the year since his initiation rite at the lake, Marty had become the hunter his father had anticipated, keen of eye and eager. He was twelve now, taller, still skinny but filling out.

The truck needed exhaust work. Anybody within a quarter of a mile might have heard it. But there was a brisk wind to go with the subzero temperature, so there was nobody to hear and notice the pickup with the illegal deer in the bed. Most folks knew Carl Hawk and his son Marty hunted out of season anyway, and chose not to do anything about it. They were more than a little scared of Carl, and besides, the family needed the meat.

Carl was driving. Marty sat next to him with one hand on the door handle to brace himself, his teeth clenched, as the truck bucked and swayed. Their rifles were unloaded and fitted into brackets so they were stacked horizontally across the back window. The deer in the truck’s bed was a dead six-point buck that Marty had shot three hours ago. Its throat was slashed and the animal had bled out where it hung in the woods while Carl and Marty had hunted some more, so it wasn’t making much of a mess in the truck.

“We’ll drive on into the barn,” Carl said, “so’s you can get right to it.”

“Yes, sir.” Marty’s breath fogged like his father’s in the cold truck, as the heater hadn’t worked since he could remember. He’d thought some days that they might as well be driving with the windows down.

When they reached the barn, Marty climbed down out of the truck and used the cold, rusty hasp for a handle as he swung one of the big wooden doors open. The hinges squealed, and the wind tried to take control of the door, so he had to hold tight to keep it from blowing shut.

The old truck growled and spat as if clearing its throat as Marty’s father bounced it over frozen ruts and inside the straw-littered building. Curtains briefly parted in one of the house’s front windows, but neither Carl nor Marty noticed, being too cold and bent on their task.

As soon as the truck was clear, Marty leaned into the barn door and walked backward, letting it close of its own accord as a concession to the wind.

There was no electricity in the barn, but it was easy enough to see by the light slanting in through spaces between the boards. There wasn’t much warmth, either, and eddies of winter wind found their way inside. There wasn’t any livestock. The family was down to half a dozen chickens, huddled in their coop, and four hogs crowded together for warmth in the walled plywood lean-to attached to their pen.

There was more growling and grinding of gears as Carl maneuvered the truck so its bed was directly below the block and tackle attached to one of the barn’s rafters.

Marty scampered up into the bed and got hold of the thick rope dangling from the pulley. He looped the rope around and between the deer’s stiffened rear legs and fastened it with a solid bowline knot.

When he was finished, he hopped down off the truck and went over to where the rope was angled away from the overhead pulley and was wound about the spool of a steel winch. Marty clung to the winch handle and gave it several turns while his father edged the truck forward until the deer was hanging free of the opened tailgate.

The truck’s engine gave a few mighty roars and died, and Carl got out and helped Marty work the winch another turn until the deer was hanging upside down with its antlers a few inches off the plank floor.

Carl brushed his gloved hands together, then stood off to the side and lit a cigar. He was watching Marty squinty-eyed through the smoke, a slight smile on his seamed face.

Marty knew what to do. He removed his jacket and draped it over the side of the truck bed, then rolled his shirtsleeves up above his elbows. The gutting knife was hanging by its buckskin cord on one of the wood supporting beams. Marty took it down and ran a finger over its cutting edge to make sure it was sharp. Then he approached the deer, struck with the knife hard and straight between the deer’s rear legs, and used his own body weight to make a ripping incision down the deer’s swollen belly all the way to the base of its throat. He had to move back fast then, as undrained blood and the animal’s intestines spilled out onto the floor.

Marty worked quickly and skillfully with the gutting knife, his arms inside the still-warm animal up to their elbows. Cold as the barn was, the deer’s dwindling body warmth felt good. He tied off the anus, then sliced away the internal organs, making sure all the intestines were detached, letting the visceral matter drop to the floor where the initial mass of bloody innards lay. Marty and his father would later feed it to the hogs. Most of the rest of the deer they would store in the keep box outside the house, where it would remain frozen for weeks while the family gradually consumed it. Sometimes Carl would want the antlers saved, so he could mount them on one of the barn walls with dozens of other impressive racks of antlers. But this deer was merely a six point, so the antlers could also go to the hogs.

“You make sure you hose all that blood off you ’fore you come in the house,” said a woman’s voice.

Marty turned from his task and saw his mother, Alma.

Of course he hadn’t been able to clean his arms and hands completely of blood. Not that Alma wouldn’t have found blood, anyway. She always found something wrong.

That night, after Marty was in bed, she sighed and put down the Bible she’d been reading. He heard the faint squeaking of her chair’s wooden rockers stop as she stood up from it.

She didn’t delay. She came into the bedroom and yanked the T-shirt Marty slept in off him so hard that it tore. Then she took one of Carl’s belts to Marty, and, as usual, Carl did nothing to stop her.

“You want the blood of the beast on you?” she asked, over and over as she lashed Marty, who was now wearing only his jockey shorts.

“No’m,” he said, each time she asked, but she continued to strike with the belt, skillfully turning it at the end of some of the strokes so the edge of the leather cut flesh.

“I’ll give you blood!” she said. “The Lord saith to give them that sins plenty of blood. I’ll beat an’ beat till you’re washed in the blood of the lamb, and you’ll be pure!”

When she was exhausted, she dropped the belt and staggered out of the bedroom, leaving behind Marty’s lasting memory of his mother, a hunched, glum figure seen from the back, topped with a tangled mass of hair, trudging away from him.

Carl brought in the bottle of bourbon he’d been sipping from and used some of the liquor for antiseptic, which he applied with what was left of the T-shirt Alma had ripped off Marty.

“Woman’s got her scripture kinda misspoken,” Carl said, dabbing with the saturated cloth as Marty gritted his teeth in pain.

“All in all,” Marty said, “I like your religion better.”

“Our religion,” his father said, making sure there was plenty of alcohol on the welts he was treating. “Gonna kill us both, what she’s gonna do. I think she’s puttin’ roach poison in my whiskey. It don’t taste right. Hasn’t for a while. An’ it appears there’s some poison missin’ from the bottle out in the barn.”

“No call for roach poison in the winter,” Marty said.

His father nodded. “An’ my gut most times feels like it’s on fire.”

Marty said nothing, trying not to whine as the alcohol contacted the welts.

“Woman’s crazy,” Carl muttered as he applied aid. “Somethin’s gotta be done, is what. Somethin’s gotta be done.”

Marty knew there was no need to answer. It wasn’t the first time for this. It was something he’d gotten used to, as much as you could say anyone ever got used to serious whalings with a belt. Marty could absorb pain without complaint, when he knew he must. And he knew this was one of those times, and that it would happen again.

This was family ritual.

New York, the present

Quinn and Zoe had just left D’Zello’s Ristorante and were walking slowly along Broadway in the heat. He hadn’t tried to talk to her at lunch about what was bothering him. If it led to an argument, he didn’t want it to be where everyone could hear them.

They were moving faster than the traffic, which was backed up because one lane was closed for construction. Wooden sawhorses and yellow caution tape were everywhere, but it was impossible to tell what exactly was being done. Whatever it was involved a lot of digging, though no one could be seen at present doing work of any sort. Now and then a frustrated driver would lean hard on his horn. A siren yowled deafeningly and quickly faded, as if an emergency vehicle was going like hell a block over. Quinn knew it was probably bogged down in traffic and the driver was venting his frustration.

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” he asked, as he strolled beside Zoe toward where his car was parked illegally with an NYPD placard on the lowered sun visor. A warm breeze kicked up, and he could feel the grit of construction dust on his teeth.

“About lunch?” she asked.

“You’re the psychoanalyst,” he said. “You think that’s what I’m asking about?” Immediately he regretted the tone of his own voice; it was almost as if he were interrogating a suspect.

But damn it, she asked for it.

Or had she? Maybe he’d misinterpreted her words and facial expression.

After four more, slightly slower steps, she said, “What
are
you asking?”

“When we were together this morning and I joked about how I tended to get a phone call about a murder after we’ve had sex, the look on your face suggested something had crossed your mind.”

“I’m that transparent?”

He smiled. “ ’Fraid so.”

They walked silently for a while. A hybrid bus accelerated away from a stop in the street alongside them, leaving a strong scent of environmentally proper exhaust. A new smell for the olfactory stew of New York.

“I hesitated mentioning what I thought,” Zoe said, “because it’s probably meaningless, and if I told you about it there might be unnecessary trouble.”

“Should you be the judge of that?”

“Maybe. There’s also a professional obligation.”

They were at the parked Lincoln. Quinn slowed and stood beside the car. Sunlight glinted off its roof and obscured his vision so he had to move in order to see Zoe clearly. “This is about one of your patients,” he said.

“No, nothing like that.”

He rested a hand very gently on her back, spanning her shoulder blades beneath the thin material of her blouse with his long fingers. The slight contact made her heart thump, and not only from aroused sexual memory. There was something about Quinn that made people want to give up their secrets. She thought he would have made a damned good psychoanalyst. Better yet, a priest.

In a way, that’s what he is.

“Zoe?” he said, as if reminding her that he was there, waiting for her explanation.

The words seemed to flow from her of their own accord. “When you mentioned the coincidence of learning about two of the murders when we were together, each time after we had sex, it made me think of someone.”

“Someone you suspect?” He really didn’t see how that was possible.

“Someone I…used to be involved with.”

Ah…!
He didn’t like where this might be going. “The way you’re involved with me?”

“Not exactly. Not in any way. You and Alfred aren’t at all alike.”

Alfred?
“But you were lovers?”

“Yes. For a brief while. It ended over a year ago.”

“Who—”

“I ended it. Alfred…our sex was becoming more and more violent.”

“He hurt you?”

“Sometimes. When he was in sexual thrall. Or when he became angry with me.”

She seemed to be recalling the affair with the objectivity of her profession. She might have been talking about two other people, and to someone she barely knew. “Angry about what?” he asked.

“Anything and everything. Alfred had—probably still has—anger issues. Sometimes they find an outlet when they’re sexually engaged. He’s sadistic and admits it. He was looking for something in me I wasn’t prepared to give him.”

“How badly did he hurt you?”

“It was nothing serious. Minor bruises. Whip marks.”

“
Whip marks?
Jesus, Zoe!”

“You’ve been a cop a long time, Quinn. You know the spectrum of human sexual activity, especially in this city. Alfred tried to persuade me to engage in things that left me cold, sometimes things that repulsed me. I hope I don’t need to go into detail. In fact, I won’t go into detail.”

Quinn sensed her getting mad at him. So Zoe had her own anger issues. Well, maybe she had good reason.

“I’m not pressing you for any information you don’t want to give. And I can see why, when the subject of women being murdered and defiled came up, you’d naturally think of…does he have a name beyond Alfred?”

“Beeker. Dr. Alfred Beeker. He’s a psychoanalyst.”

“Like you?”

“Not exactly. He’s a cognitive analyst.”

“And you are…?”

“What you might call a creative Jungian.”

Quinn thought he’d better take a different tack. “If Beeker’s a psychologist, can’t he figure out he needs help himself?”

“He’s a psychiatrist, actually, who practices psychotherapy and augments it with drugs, and apparently he doesn’t think he needs help. There are plenty of people out there playing the same games he plays, so he’s not at a loss for partners.”

“It can be a dangerous game.”

“That’s part of the allure. Listen, Quinn, Alfred moves in a world he considers normal. And for the people in it, maybe it
is
normal. No laws are being broken, and everything is consensual. But what it came down to was I wasn’t part of that world and didn’t want to be, and he couldn’t accept that.”

“I more or less agree with you about consensual adults, but what you described between the two of you didn’t sound consensual.”

She smiled in that gradual, quiet way that devastated him. “The problem was that sometimes pretending to be forced was part of the game. It got so Alfred couldn’t see the difference. As far as he was concerned, the game was always on.”

“And for him it wasn’t a game,” Quinn said.

“For
me
it wasn’t always a game.” She moved away from Quinn and leaned with her buttocks against the car’s sun-warmed fender, crossing her arms. “He didn’t like it that I left him.”

“You afraid of him?”

“Not anymore. I haven’t even seen him in months. Maybe he doesn’t think of me at all.”

“That’d be a tough job for any man. What you were thinking this morning, Zoe?…Was it that he might know about you and me, might resent it, and it could somehow be tied in with the Slicer murders?”

Again Quinn surprised her with his nose for the truth, as if he were some sort of psychic bloodhound. He would get there sooner or later on his own, so she might as well tell him.

“He…” She tightened her grip on her elbows and swallowed. “He sometimes insisted on role playing, doing a scene where he raped me at knifepoint. He even wore a mask and pretended he’d just come in through my bedroom window. He took photographs with a digital camera. He told me he’d posted some on the Internet, though nothing too suggestive. But I was always afraid he’d…taken some I wasn’t aware of.”

“Hell, Zoe…”

“Back in college people said psych majors went into it because of their own crazy hang-ups. Maybe they were right.”

Quinn shrugged. “I’ve heard the same thing about my profession. Maybe they were right, too.”

“I know I was an idiot, but I went along with it. A few times, it went too far. He cut me.”

“
Cut
you?”

“Not badly, and he always said it was an accident. But I associate dead women and knives with Alfred Beeker.”

“I can see why. I’m going to talk to him, Zoe.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“I won’t do anything drastic. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to feel Beeker out and see if he’s still into those kinds of games, and if they’ve become even more violent.”

“Quinn, I don’t want you playing the protector-avenger role.”

“I’m a cop, Zoe. Women are being murdered and butchered with a knife, and I’ve just learned about a sadist who likes to cut women. I need to look into him. I think you knew that, or you wouldn’t have told me about him. Am I right?”

“I don’t even know.”

Quinn thought he knew. The city harbored more than a few sadists who liked to cut women, and he doubted that Beeker was the Slicer. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to warn Beeker, to make sure the nutcase doctor knew there’d be consequences if he bothered Zoe again. Later, if necessary, would come the avenger part of Quinn’s role.

He moved closer to her, leaned down, and kissed her cheek. She was wet with perspiration.

“Let’s get in the car and get the air conditioner going,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

“To my office,” she said. “I’ve got a two o’clock appointment.”

“With a psychotic killer?”

“With a man who’s terrified of turning corners when he’s walking alone.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, “that’s all of us.”

He opened the car door for her and watched her get in, thinking again how gracefully she moved and how beautiful she was. How much he already cared about her. She was becoming an addiction, his own illness and fixation.

So this is what it’s like dating a psychoanalyst.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, as they pulled away from the curb.

“How glad I am I didn’t bring up this subject in the restaurant,” he said.

Later that same afternoon, Quinn found Dr. Alfred Beeker in the Manhattan phone directory. His office was on Park Avenue, about three blocks away from Zoe’s.

Quinn thought he should see the doctor as soon as possible, with or without an appointment.