John Lutz Bundle (155 page)

Throughout the next day they learned about Martin Hawk, saw where he’d been staying in Manhattan, where he lived in Stamford, Connecticut. They learned how he lived, what he read, whom he knew, and in a sense came to know him.

In his Manhattan hotel room they’d found a blue carry-on containing a large bicycle hook, rolls of duct tape, a coil of nylon rope, and a sharp knife. Everyone there was relieved, even the SCU people. No one was more relieved than Quinn. There was no doubt about it now. Renz and Helen’s single-killer theory had been on target. They’d gotten the right man, and he’d left them no choice but to take him down permanently.

Hawk’s house and its contents were even more revealing.

In Stamford, he’d lived alone in a ten-room brick and stone house on a wooded piece of property large enough to be called an estate. He’d lived and been educated in England for a while, and had indeed been a hunter. His big game trophies attested to that. According to neighbors he was friendly, even charming, but was somewhat aloof and had lived a lonely life. On his walls hung valuable abstract art. In his refrigerator were gourmet foods. In his garage were a two-year-old Jaguar and a three-year-old Land Rover. In his office and his bedroom were framed photographs of two attractive women, but there was nothing in the house to identify them.

Hawk’s office yielded the most evidence. A concealed safe contained client names and a set of books for a company referred to as Quest and Quarry.

All in all, the suspect’s hotel room and home were mines rich with the ore of evidence. If he’d been alive to stand trial, the outcome wouldn’t have been in doubt.

But Martin Hawk would never stand trial, and soon the case would be officially closed.

Quinn and Pearl were still decompressing from the action that took Hawk’s life, and had almost claimed Quinn’s. Fedderman had taken the time to call the airport and check on flights back to Florida. Cindy Sellers had her scoop and was no longer hectoring Renz, who was basking, even romping, in favorable publicity. Mitzi Lewis couldn’t stop walking around smiling and marveling at her good luck. It was easy to be funny when you were so grateful to be breathing.

The pressure was off all around.

Quinn spent most of his time at Zoe’s and slept there to avoid the media wolves. He and Zoe would make love, and afterward it would be hours before he’d fall asleep. Maybe the cause of his sleeplessness was the lasting exhilaration of still being alive, along with the residue of fear. He’d experienced these emotions before. It took a while sometimes to come down from the adrenaline and cortisone high of taunting death and winning.

But he knew that wasn’t what was disturbing his sleep.

Something barely beyond his consciousness wasn’t right.

The morning was cooler than most, and golden with sunlight.

Zoe skipped their usual grapefruit, toast, and coffee in the kitchen and left the apartment early to deal with her appointments. Quinn showered and dressed, then went out to buy a newspaper and get some breakfast.

The television mounted high behind the counter of the Lotus Diner was tuned to the news, and the news, of course, was still about Martin Hawk, Renz, Quinn, and Pearl. But mostly about Martin Hawk.

Thel the waitress came over and cleared the dishes, then topped off Quinn’s coffee.

“You didn’t bring the check,” Quinn said.

“This one’s on us,” Thel said. “Just this once. Don’t get used to it.”

That was about as civil as Thel got. Quinn thanked her, and she ignored him and returned to stand near the coffee urn behind the counter.

Quinn sat for another half hour reading the news, an ear cocked to the softly playing television.

Reading and hearing it made things suddenly come together.

He realized what had been disturbing his sleep. What was still bothering him.

A very large piece of the puzzle was missing.

He got his cell phone from his pocket and started to peck out Zoe’s office number. Then he changed his mind and called Helen the profiler.

Helen, like Quinn, did contract work for the NYPD and had a home office. It was a converted second bedroom of her apartment in the Village, and it had French doors that led out to a small brick courtyard surrounded by foliage, an ancient brick wall, and a high wooden fence that looked ready to collapse from the weight of the vines growing up it. Helen had coffee made, and she and Quinn sat in wrought-iron chairs at the small round metal table in the center of the courtyard. They were in deep shade, and the sounds from the street were curiously muffled yet nearby.

Helen was wearing some kind of kimono, brown leather sandals, and no makeup. Her ginger-colored hair was combed back and held by a tan elastic band. She looked younger than usual, like a lanky athlete who’d just come from a women’s college basketball game.

Quinn sipped his coffee from an old cracked mug lettered THIMK and glanced around. “Nice back here.”

“Private,” Helen said. He knew it was an invitation to talk in confidence.

“I have a feeling you know why I came,” Quinn said.

“Yeah, but you go first.”

“I know we were dealing with dual and possibly conflicting personalities in the same person, but now that we know more about Martin Hawk, I’m having a hard time buying into the notion that he did those women.”

“You think Pearl shot the wrong man?”

“Not exactly.” Quinn reached for words he couldn’t find. “I’m not sure what I think.”

Helen leaned back and crossed her long legs beneath the silk kimono. Her well-pedicured feet looked huge and reminded Quinn what a large woman she was.

She said, “Martin Hawk turned out to be an educated and sophisticated opponent who was obviously upset about the dearth of tradition and sportsmanship in society, depressed over what his life’s love and endeavor had become. You’re thinking that whatever duality he might have contained, it’s unlikely that a man like Hawk, obsessed with fairness and honor, the regimen of the hunt, would simply slaughter unsuspecting helpless victims.”

“You’ve been giving this some thought,” Quinn said.

Helen nodded. “As have you.”

“Have you spoken to Renz?”

Helen smiled sadly. “He wouldn’t want to listen. Wouldn’t believe me if he did listen. There’s a narrative fixed in his mind and in the media. It’s all working for him now, and he wouldn’t want to change it. And I have to say he’d have a point. What about the stuff they found in the bag in Hawk’s hotel room?”

“I don’t know about it. I thought maybe you might explain it.”

“I can’t,” Helen said. “It’s compelling evidence. It would have taken down the suspect in court if Pearl’s bullets had missed.”

“You and I both think there’s something more to this case. The only problem is, we don’t know what.”

“That’s where we stand,” Helen said.

“So what do we do?” Quinn asked.

“I’m not certain we’re correct. But
if
we are, at this point I’m not in any position to do anything.”

“You could risk your job and professional reputation by backing me up,” Quinn said.

He’d thought Helen would laugh or at least smile, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “Bring me something, and I’ll back you.”

Then she smiled. “If there is something.”

Quinn knew that if he went to his apartment or to the office there’d be media types there. The Manhattan paparazzi.

He drove the Lincoln to First Avenue and found a parking space near East Fifty-fifth Street. He got out of the car and fed the meter, then began walking south on the sunny, crowded sidewalk, cloaking himself in the anonymity of the city.

As he walked, he thought about the way the Slicer victims were killed. Displaying the victims was almost like a desecration of the hunt, and the hunt had been Martin Hawk’s quasi-religion. It seemed impossible, at least in Quinn’s mind, that the .25-Caliber Killer and the Slicer were the same man.

Then who was the Slicer?

Alfred Beeker? Could he kill in such a grisly manner? Perhaps. His was a profession that delved into sadistic and tortured souls. Maybe some of what he’d encountered had rubbed off.

Or maybe limiting the suspects to men might be where things had gone wrong. It wasn’t only men who sometimes hated women. Plenty of women still had enough pent-up rage at their mothers or sisters to compel them to kill.

And what about Dwayne Avis, prime suspect alphabetically but not in any other way? Quinn realized with a jolt that identification with the prominent rental car agency had diverted his attention from the fact that
avis
was Latin for
bird.

Apropos of nothing. But still…

On the other hand, Avis was unlikely. He was in his late fifties, in the outer range of age for serial killers.

Still, it was possible. While the psychologists might be right and it was a long leap from torturing and killing animals to torturing and killing women, maybe it worked in the other direction. The dogs might not have been first. They might have been used as some kind of stopgap between human victims. Grisly offerings to relieve the compulsion to kill.

Quinn had to do
something,
and he needed his computer and directories, the files on the women’s murders.

He got back into the car and drove toward the office on West Seventy-ninth Street. The hell with the media.

There were only about a dozen of them outside the office, perhaps because they thought the main narrative of the story they were simultaneously following and creating was over. Quinn brushed past them with relative ease, smiling and no-commenting every third step.

When he was inside, he ignored frantic, loud knocking and locked and chained the street door. This wasn’t a regular precinct house; there was no reason to keep it open when most of the neighborhood didn’t even know it existed.

He switched on the office lights and sat down at his desk, then booted up his computer. He ignored it while it was activating its underlying software, and instead turned his attention to his phone directories and the Dwayne Avis file.

There was plenty to be found on the arrest and conviction of Avis in Browne County in upstate New York for cruelty to animals.

It took Quinn about fifteen minutes to contact the Browne County Sheriff’s Office that had apprehended Avis. The officers who’d been involved in the case were no longer with the department, but the undersheriff (which Quinn figured was some kind of deputy) Quinn talked to had, like Quinn, a voluminous file on Dwayne Avis.

The undersheriff’s name was Tom Hazelhoff, and he held a dim view of Avis. “Guy’s quite an asshole,” Hazelhoff said, “but he don’t give us much trouble anymore. Keeps to himself, and the neighbors don’t call in about some poor dog yowling all night. Guy who’d do that to dogs…” Hazelhoff ’s voice trailed off in disgust.

“I hear you,” Quinn said. “I’m a dog man myself. Your files’d be more extensive than ours, since he was in your system and went to trial there. What I want to know about Dwayne Avis is whether that’s his real name. ”

“Hold on,” Hazelhoff said. “Lemme look.”

He was gone more than ten minutes. Quinn almost hung up.

Then his patience was rewarded. Hazelhoff came back on the line.

“It’s his real name, all right,” Hazelhoff said.

Quinn’s heart became a weight in his chest.

“He had it legally changed to Dwayne Avis twelve years ago when he came here from Missouri,” Hazelhoff continued, “from his Native American name, Wild Sky Hawk. It says here for reasons of convenience.”

That was when the building collapsed on Quinn. Or was it the truth and full understanding?

Dwayne Avis was Martin Hawk’s father.

It was the son who procured victims for his father, repaying old debts, or perhaps even out of twisted familial love or obligation. The son, Martin, had nothing to do with the actual slaughter. Martin Hawk had personally killed no one.

Suddenly it occurred to Quinn that Dwayne Avis must be aware of the barrage of media attention being given to the .25-Caliber Killer case and the death of Martin Hawk, his son. Avis was isolated on his remote farm, but he surely had a generator, electricity, a radio or television.

“Quinn? You still there?”

“I am. Thanks, deputy.”

“Undersheriff. I hope I was of help.”

“Oh, you were. Can I ask another favor?”

“Sure can.”

“Get someone to Dwayne Avis’s farm soon as you can and hold him for questioning.”

“In regards to what?”

“Murder,” Quinn said. “Not dogs this time.”

“I’ll go myself,” Hazelhoff said.

“I were you, I’d take backup.”

But Hazelhoff had broken the connection and was gone.