Mister X (7 page)

He’d dropped silently from the iron fire escape into the courtyard and made his way through the narrow passageway on the side of the building to the street. No one had seen him, he was sure. And even if someone had noticed him, they’d never be able to recognize him. He was away clean. Things hadn’t worked out as he’d planned, but he was safe.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Not at this point. He’d only wanted to learn more about her.

Her name was Mary. Mary Bakehouse. He knew that much from riffling through the contents of her desk. He knew where she banked, how much she owed, where she left her laundry, that she had family in godforsaken South Dakota. He’d seen photographs of her and her country relatives, the Bakehouse clan, and a close-up of lovely Mary wearing a white blouse buttoned to her throat and grinning with every tooth. Desk drawers could be so revealing.

He’d been about to switch on her computer and learn even more about her when he heard her out in the hall, fumbling for her door key.

He’d barely had time to sweep everything back into the drawers and push them shut, then conceal himself before she’d entered.

She’d diligently searched the rest of the apartment before returning to the living room, where he’d decided to reveal himself.

He’d known she’d be frightened but not so exquisitely. She was his, and she knew it immediately. The knowledge had stopped her throat and silenced her with its terrible truth.

That was why he’d taken his time. He wasn’t going to harm her, but she didn’t know that. He was in control. He could manage an orderly exit. She wouldn’t have much of a description to give to the police. Probably not enough to pick him out of a lineup and certainly not enough to make a positive identification. He’d be well away and in the clear.

Dressed in clothes from his respectable wardrobe and clean shaven, his artificial dentures removed, he was reasonably confident he could pass her in the street or sit opposite her on the subway, and she might suspect he was the same man but she couldn’t be sure.

From now on, uncertainty would be her constant companion. Even in her dreams she would doubt.

Thoughts. She would be the victim of her thoughts, just as he was of his. Thoughts couldn’t hurt anyone, but she wouldn’t know that. Not in her heart. Not for sure.

Walking swiftly toward the corner where he could hail a cab, he smiled. Mary Bakehouse might never be sure of anything else in her life.

That he could do such a thing to her, and so easily, the special power that he had, gave him a partial erection. He bent slightly forward as he walked so no one would notice. And if they did, so what?

The power and control…

His erection persisted. Mary would find the mess in her desk drawers and know he’d examined their contents, but that was okay. He wanted her to know. Ultimately, that would work for him.

She’d probably report their encounter to the authorities, but she’d soon find out they really couldn’t do anything about it, and they certainly couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.

That would make her feel even more powerless.

Within a few minutes he was seated comfortably in the back of a cab, the incident with Mary Bakehouse fading behind him.

Thoughts were all they’d dealt with tonight, not blood. Later might come the blood. He knew that. He could deny it. He could fight it. But he couldn’t be sure of the outcome.

Maybe he’d pay Mary Bakehouse another visit, and maybe he wouldn’t. She knew that he might, and that made the night a triumph.

He hadn’t set out to hurt her, and he hadn’t. Still, in a way, their encounter had been a success for him. Ask Mary Bakehouse, and if she could bring herself to be honest, she’d admit that.

Whether she lived or died depended entirely upon his whim. He remembered her complete loss of control, the warm urine escaping her body. They both recognized at that moment her fetid, trickling surrender.

She belonged to him. She understood that in the very depths of her soul, in the dark recesses of her brain where the demons played.

That was enough for now.

It wouldn’t look like much in the morning
Times
or
Post,
if it even made the papers. And it wouldn’t be mentioned on TV news. After all, there was no tape. There’d been no chance for some techie geek with a phone camera to be standing nearby creating a video stream.

Mary had been treated well by the police and the hospital staff. At the hospital she’d been given a thorough examination, and what they referred to as a rape kit had been used on her to confirm that she hadn’t been penetrated.

After the ordeal at the hospital she had given a carefully detailed and recorded statement. Through it all she could sense a genuine concern, but also a workaday disinterest. Hers wasn’t the first story like this they’d heard. No one had actually told her that, but it showed.

The incident would be merely another apartment break-in in New York. The intruder had been surprised by the occupant and frightened away. Nothing had been taken. No one had been seriously hurt. Mary’s encounter with a man who might have killed her would be barely worth a mention in the media. In the grand and sweeping maelstrom of the city, it wasn’t at all important.

Except to Mary.

Quinn sat up late at the desk in his den and let his thoughts roam. A cigar in a glass ashtray was playing up a thread of smoke that dissipated before it reached the ceiling. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat on a round cork coaster. The cup was Spode and a survivor of his time with his former wife, May, who was married now to a real estate attorney in California. Their daughter Lauri was in California, too, but in a different part of the state. Quinn figured May and Lauri seldom, if ever, saw each other, but he couldn’t be sure. Lauri had ditched her musician boyfriend Wormy, and as far as Quinn knew was concentrating on her studies at Muir College in the northern part of the state. When last he heard Lauri was studying journalism.

He drew on the cigar, exhaled, and concentrated less on his personal life and more on the case. On the desk was a yellow legal pad, as yet unmarked. Quinn picked up a ballpoint pen and began to make notes as he went over the case in his mind. Sometimes seeing things in some kind of order, in print, made them clearer.

Tiffany Keller had years ago been the last victim of the Carver.

Her twin, Chrissie, won the Triple Monkey whatever slot-machine jackpot and found herself suddenly moderately wealthy. She decided to use the money to find her sister’s killer. Or, more accurately, to avenge her sister’s death.

The NYPD had demonstrated no interest in reopening the case.

Chrissie, after pretending to be Tiffany’s ghost to get Quinn’s attention, had finally admitted who she was and hired Quinn and Associates to find the Carver.

After paying a handsome retainer, Chrissie had then disappeared.

Chrissie had deleted any and all photographs of Tiffany from news items in the folder she’d left with Quinn.

Photographs on the Internet revealed that Chrissie and Tiffany looked nothing alike.

Renz had phoned and tried to warn Quinn off the case.

Quinn jotted on the legal pad that Chrissie was not to be trusted. There was no need to write a reminder about Renz.

Quinn placed his cigar back in the ashtray and leaned back in his desk chair to look over what he’d written on the legal pad.

None of it aided him in any kind of understanding.

Too early,
he assured himself. But that didn’t alleviate the uneasy feeling deep in his stomach.

He placed the legal pad in the shallow center drawer of the desk, then slid the drawer closed. His cigar was smoked down to a nub, so he took a final pull on it, then snuffed it out in the ashtray. A sample sip of his coffee revealed it to be too cool to drink.

He was weary, but not tired in a way conducive to sleep. Maybe he should walk over to the Lotus Diner, drink a hot chocolate, and trade insults with Thel, if she was working late.

Better, he decided, to lock up the apartment and call it a night. That way he could sleep on what he’d written on his legal pad. Maybe something would occur to him in his dreams, and he’d remember it tomorrow morning and everything would make sense.

Then he remembered that nothing ever entirely made sense and went to bed.

The first thing Quinn saw when he entered the Lotus Diner the next morning was Thel. She was in her usual acerbic mood, which was somehow reassuring.

After a breakfast of biscuits, a three-egg cheese omelet, bacon, and two cups of coffee, Quinn walked from the Lotus Diner to the office on West Seventy-ninth Street. Dr. Gregory, whom Quinn infrequently saw at the doctor’s medical service over on Columbus, would hardly have approved of the meal, but he’d endorse the walk.

The morning hadn’t yet heated up and was beautiful. Sun glinted off the buildings and made vivid the canvas canopies over entrances and outdoor restaurants. Produce and fresh-cut flowers in outside stands sweetened the air. The bustle and rumble of the city was background music for millions of dramas. The city in its entirety was a bold and brassy Broadway musical and didn’t know it.

Even the exhaust fumes smelled good to Quinn. It was the kind of morning that promised hope, at least for a while, though he realized it could be a con, like the rest of the city. New York liked to trick people. Even astound them.

Pearl and Fedderman were already in the office. Pearl was hunched over her computer, dark eyes fixed on the monitor, her outstretched right hand deftly moving her mouse on its pad as if playing on a Ouija board. The low-tech Fedderman was slouched at his desk reading a newspaper. The trespass and assault at Mary Bakehouse’s apartment was mentioned in the
Post
police blotter section, but it hadn’t made the
Times.
Not that it would have meant anything to Fedderman, who was reading the
Times
anyway. He’d probably be too busy today to read any other newspaper.

Nor would it have meant much of anything to Quinn, who had other things on his mind.

“No phone messages,” Pearl said, glancing over at him.

Quinn grunted and went over to the table where the occasionally gurgling brewer sat. He poured himself his third coffee of the morning.

“We thought maybe our missing client Chrissie might have called,” Fedderman said.

Quinn wandered back to stand between their desks, sipping coffee that would never be as good as the stuff at the Lotus Diner.

“Feds and I have a bet,” Pearl said. “He thinks we’ll never see Chrissie Keller again. I think we will, and there’ll be an explanation for her disappearance.”

“What kind of explanation?” Quinn asked.

Pearl smiled. “Not necessarily one we’ll believe.”

“What if she can’t contact us because the Carver’s made sure it’s impossible?”

Pearl had considered that and saw it as unlikely. But there was no ruling it out. “It’s something to keep in mind,” she said, “but I do lean the other way. From the beginning, Chrissie struck me as the disappearing type. Not playing straight with us from word one.”

“Meanwhile,” Quinn said, “she’s still our client. We’re spending her money, so we’ll continue to work the case, no matter what Renz says.”

They both looked at him.

Fedderman folded his paper closed and said, “Renz?” As if a rare and unpleasant ailment had been mentioned.

Quinn told them about yesterday evening’s phone call.

When he was finished, Fedderman said, “Is that guy ever, for even one second, not a self-serving prick?”

Quinn shrugged. “He’s a politician.”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

Pearl sat staring and smiling slightly at Quinn. She didn’t have to ask whether they were going to continue on the case. Instead she said, “How are we going to work it?”

“I’m about to make a phone call,” Quinn said. “And not to Harley Renz.”

It hadn’t taken him long to dig up Cindy Sellers’s direct line at
City Beat
from when she’d badgered them on a previous case.

She answered on the second ring. Quinn guessed a muck-raking reporter had to stick close to the phone. Or possibly his call had been patched through to a mobile phone.

When Quinn had identified himself, Sellers’s voice became wary. “Always a pleasure to hear from you, Captain.”

“Not ‘Captain’ anymore,” Quinn said. “I’ve opened up my own investigative agency.”

“That’s right, I heard.” She waited a few beats. “Well, anything I can do to scratch somebody’s back who’s willing to scratch back…?”

“What I always liked about you was that it wasn’t necessary to do a verbal dance getting to the point. You’re honest in your own special way.”

She laughed. “But I like dancing with you, Quinn. You tromp on my toes now and then, but what the hell.”

“You like dancing with Harley Renz?”

“Oh, he’s an amazingly deft dancer. But you know that.”

There was a smile in her voice. She knew he wanted something, or he wouldn’t have called.

“To the point,” Quinn said, “I have some information that might interest you.”

“So interest me.”

“There you go—very direct.”

“You be too, why don’t you?”

Quinn almost smiled. Sometimes Sellers could be as much of a smart-ass as Pearl. “Remember the Carver murders?”

“Sure. Serial killer, five or six years ago. One of the few in this city that you didn’t catch. In fact, didn’t that killer—”

“He was never caught,” Quinn interrupted. “But it turns out that was only round one. The case has been reopened, and we think he can be caught now.”

“New evidence?”

“We can’t say.”

“What made the NYPD reopen the investigation?”

“It didn’t. We did.”

“We?”

“Quinn and Associates Investigations.”

Sellers was quiet for a moment. “And the NYPD doesn’t like you meddling.”

“That’s it.”

“Renz told you to fold your tent.”

“Uh-huh. He doesn’t want the department and its illustrious police commissioner to be embarrassed by dredging up an old case the police were unable to solve. He’s afraid of the negative publicity, so he’s pressuring us to halt our investigation.”

Cindy Sellers laughed. “No point in that if the information’s already out in the media, based on information from anonymous sources, of course.”

“That’s the game,” Quinn said.

Sellers said, “I’ll play. But there has to be a quid pro quo.”

“You’ll be first in the media to know everything,” Quinn said. “Starting now.”

“And I’ll be in on the finale? If there is one.”

“There’ll be one,” Quinn said, “and you’ll be there.”

Again one of Cindy’s silences. There weren’t many; she tended to think on the run, asking questions along the way.

“Somebody must have hired you,” she said at last.

“The killer’s last victim had a sister. A twin.”

“
A twin!
And the surviving twin is your client?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wonderful! The surviving twin wants vengeance. It’s almost poetic. It’s as if the murderer killed only half of his victim, and now the other half—”

“However you want to play it,” Quinn said.

“We have an arrangement, Quinn. Tell me more.”

And he did. Not everything, of course, but just enough.

After hanging up, he absently wiped his hand on his pants leg, as if Sellers had salivated over the phone.

Fedderman was grinning at him. “Renz is gonna be so mad he might catch fire.”

“Give me a can of gas,” Pearl said, rather absently.

She was gazing at Quinn in a way he recognized, thoughtfully and slightly disturbed, as if she’d again discovered a new facet of his deviousness.

“This will work out,” he assured her.

Now there was something cautionary in her look, warning him that he’d done something possibly unwise as well as distasteful. Her “If you lie down with dogs…” look.

“I can put up with fleas,” he said.

She nodded and turned back to her computer. She’d known exactly what he’d been thinking. Incredible.

Maybe her mouse pad
was
a Ouija board.

“My, my, my,” Pearl said, reading over additional information about Geraldine Knott, the young woman who’d survived an attack eight years ago in Detroit by an assailant very much like the Carver.

She remained seated at her computer. Quinn and Fedderman were standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at the monitor. They were all reading the old news item from the archives of a Detroit newspaper. It was accompanied by another blurred black-and-white photo. In this one Geraldine Knott was standing and leaning sideways, as if hoping the camera’s aim would miss her, holding both hands covering her face.

This account of the attack was more detailed. It described how her masked assailant had gotten her on the ground and straddled her, kneeling on her upper arms to pin her to the parking garage’s concrete floor. He’d then shown her a knife and explained to her what he intended to do with it. As the news item quoted the tearful intended victim: “…slice off my nipples, do some creative carving on me, then carve me a big smile under my chin.” Fortunately for Geraldine Knott, her attacker had been frightened away.

“He mentioned carving twice,” Quinn noted.

“Could be early Carver,” Pearl said. “Or maybe some sicko imitating him.”

“Except this woman was attacked before anybody’d ever heard of the Carver,” Fedderman pointed out.

“Maybe this guy
had
heard of him and was imitating him even before he became famous,” Quinn suggested.

Pearl said, “The odds on that are about the same as Fedderman wearing both socks right side out.”

“Did I do that again?” Fedderman asked automatically, glancing down at his ankles and tugging up his pants legs.

“Sure seems like this could be our guy,” Pearl said. “The way he showed the knife and told her what he was about to do, getting his jollies by scaring the hell out of her. Or maybe our sicko saw this news account when it was fresh in a Detroit paper and it stuck in his mind.”

“I’d bet on Feds’s socks,” Quinn said.

“Then you think this was early Carver?” Pearl asked.

“I don’t know.”

Fedderman unconsciously glanced down at his feet again. “So what are we gonna do with this information?”

“Put it in the hopper,” Quinn said, “along with everything else we know or think we know.”

“And then?” Fedderman asked.

“Wait and see if someday it makes sense.”