Pulse (11 page)

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Authors: John Lutz

Tags: #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Suspense, #Espionage, #General

BOOK: Pulse
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20
T
he foyer of the super’s building was the same as that of the one next door, with a stairway falling away toward the basement, as well as ascending to a landing and a stairwell running up the rear wall. The walls had just been painted a pale green and there was no graffiti. An elevator had been installed in this building, but it had a handwritten O
UT OF ORDER
sign taped to its door. Quinn didn’t mind, as he went ahead of Pearl down the steps and felt her lightly touching his shoulder as if for balance.
He pushed a button near a brass-lettered SUPER sign on the door, and it opened almost immediately. Fernandez had heard them descending the steps.
“I thought you’d be along soon,” Fernandez said, as Quinn and Pearl flashed their IDs. He had a slight Spanish accent. He raised dark eyebrows. “You are NYPD?”
“Working with them,” Quinn said.
“Closely?”
“Like lovers.”
Fernandez grinned and stepped aside so they could enter. He was a short, handsome man in his forties, with sharp features and only a few gray strands in his jet-black hair combed straight back. He was wearing a green work outfit, but it was easy to imagine him in a tailored European suit playing a sleek gigolo in a play or movie.
Quinn had expected a modest basement apartment, but this one was spacious and well furnished, with a large flat-screen TV on one wall. A green recliner faced the TV directly. There was a small table next to the recliner with a beer bottle sitting on a magazine so it wouldn’t leave a ring. Quinn could see a modern kitchen with white appliances beyond the living room.
“You live here alone?” he asked.
“I was with my wife until six months ago.” Fernandez motioned with his arm toward a stiff-looking leather or vinyl sofa. “You want to sit down?”
Quinn and Pearl both declined.
“You and your wife separated?” Pearl asked. Fernandez hadn’t struck a tragic note, so she assumed the wife hadn’t died. Maybe the couple was divorced.
“She ran away with an electrician.”
Pearl resisted asking him if it had come as a shock. She almost smiled.
Quinn, seeing something was going on with her, took over the conversation. “Did you know Ann Spellman?”
“The vic?”
Obviously Fernandez used his big TV to watch cop shows.
“The vic,” Quinn confirmed.
“I never saw her before but to glance at her,” Fernandez said.
A large gray cat entered the room, took brief notice of the presence of Quinn and Pearl, then ignored them. Quinn watched the cat effortlessly jump up onto a plush chair and curl into a ball, facing the other way.
“That Theo?” Quinn asked.
“The one and only,” Fernandez said. “He slipped out when I was opening the door to go check and see if I had mail in my box. I forgot to look earlier, and I got a Netflix coming.
Lie to Me
. You ever see that one?”
“Constantly,” Pearl said.
“So I go after Theo, up into the foyer, and damned if the street door wasn’t open a few inches, the way it sticks sometimes, and I saw Theo squeeze through and outside.”
“What time was this?” Quinn asked.
“About midnight.”
“You wanted to watch
Lie to Me
at midnight?”
Fernandez shrugged. “What else I got to do, with the wife gone? I sure as hell couldn’t get to sleep.”
“Thinking about her and the electrician,” Pearl said.
“You got it.”
“Did you notice anyone coming or going at the building next door?”
“Just Theo. When I went outside to try to get him and bring him back, I saw him go into the other building. Its street door was hanging wide open.”
“That was unusual?” Quinn asked.
“You bet. It might be an unoccupied building, but there’s stuff to steal in there. Raw lumber, copper plumbing, even tools the workmen leave behind. That’s why they hired me, to make sure nobody unauthorized came or went. The place is usually locked tight.”
“But not tonight,” Pearl said.
“No. The lock had been forced. Like somebody wedged a pry bar or something between the door and frame and leaned hard on it.”
“A large knife, maybe?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah, that’d do it. The screws just popped out of the old wood door frame, and the lock wasn’t worth diddly.”
“So Theo was inside,” Pearl said. She and Quinn could be a smooth team when it came to keeping someone talking.
“And I went in after him.”
“You’re a brave man,” Quinn said. “Seeing the door had been forced, didn’t you think there might be someone in there?”
Fernandez gave his little shrug. “I love my cat. And I did run back here and get a flashlight and a baseball bat. Then I went back next door and went inside. I knocked the barrel of the bat against the floor and kept calling Theo as I went, making plenty of noise so if there was somebody in there he’d have plenty of time to get away. I wasn’t looking for trouble; I was looking for my cat.”
“And?”
“I didn’t find Theo, but I saw that one of the French doors out to the courtyard was open. I went to it, shined my light out there, and saw ...” Fernandez stopped and swallowed.
“The vic,” Pearl said.
Fernandez gulped again at the grisly memory. “Yes. Right away, I came back here and phoned the police.”
“Not nine-one-one,” Quinn said.
“
Madre de Dios
, I knew she was dead.”
“Yeah.”
“I waited till a police car came, then I told the officer what happened. He went in, then came back out and called for help. He asked me where I lived, then told me to come back here. First thing I saw when I stepped inside was Theo. He acted like he’d never been gone.”
“Cats,” Pearl said.
“Is there any way to get into the courtyard from the street?” Quinn asked.
Fernandez shook his head. “No, all these buildings, you got to go through them to get to the courtyards. They’re built that way for security, I guess. That’s why whoever took that lady—the vic—back there had to get through the door, then go through the apartment to the French doors.”
“Are you sure you didn’t notice anyone suspicious hanging around next door, or even in the neighborhood, the last few days or so?”
“Everybody in the neighborhood’s suspicious,” Fernandez said.
“Every neighborhood,” Pearl said.
“Hey!” Fernandez said, as if jolted by his memory. “I did see someone last week. Mr. Kemmerman, in the apartment right across the street, he’s been having trouble with his toilet leaking at the base. I been working and working on it. He seems to think it’s the flapper, making the water overflow and run down the sides of the bowl when he’s not around. Water pressure or something. I don’t see how—”
“Never mind that,” Quinn said.
“Anyway, I was leaving the Kemmerman apartment, looking out the window on the second-floor landing, and I saw a woman standing at the door to the vic’s place. At first I thought it was a Jehovah’s Witness—they been coming around—or maybe some kind of inspector. Then I saw her glance up and down the street and try the door. She gave it a good yank.”
“It was a woman?”
“Oh, sure. I could see that much, even though there were some branches in the way.”
“She see you?”
“No, I just stood still and watched, and she walked away.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Blond, I think. But it was hard to tell in the light. And there were those branches and the leaves.”
“What was she wearing?” Quinn asked.
“Jeans, I think. I don’t remember up top. Light-colored blouse or something. Thing is, I never saw her face. There wasn’t much light, and she was mostly facing away from me. And the angle I was at, her hair got in the way.”
“How was she built?”
“Looking down at her like I was, it’s hard to say, but I’d make her to be tall average. On the slender side. Had on high heels. I do remember that.”
“Would you describe them as extreme high heels?” Pearl asked.
“You mean like hooker shoes? No, nothing sexy like that. It’s just that I recall high heels. I’m a leg man, I guess.”
“I figured you for one,” Quinn said, to keep him talking. He considered asking Fernandez why, if he was a leg man, he kept staring at Pearl’s breasts.
Pointless question.
“I got the impression,” Fernandez said, “just from her arms and the way she moved, she was older than the vic, like in her forties. The vic was like a kid, almost.” He swallowed and looked grim. “She sure didn’t look like a kid last time I saw her.”
“You’re positive you never got even a glimpse of this woman’s face?” Quinn asked, keeping Fernandez on point.
“No, not the way she was standing.”
“What time was it when you saw her?”
“Around two o’clock. I’d just come back from lunch, and I rested up a little and read the paper, then went across the street to check the toilet bowl in the Kemmerman apartment. There’s no way that could have been the flapper. That’s got nothing to do with—”
“Was Mr. Kemmerman home when you saw this woman?”
“No, he was at work. He’s a teller at a bank. The people on this block, we know each other. They trust me. They know I don’t pry, like some supers. I mind my own business.”
“Too bad,” Quinn said. “If somebody had seen the killer and his victim enter that building and not minded his own business, maybe a life would have been saved.”
“I did hear one thing,” Fernandez said. “My window on that side of the building was open and I heard somebody—maybe one of the cops—say the vic was some kind of designer. A very talented artist. Is that true?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said.
That explains the protractor. It fits right in with the killer’s ghoulish sense of humor, the protracted grin.
“We’re still in the early finding-out stage. Know the name of the company where she worked?”
“No, I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t stand there and eavesdrop. I don’t pry.”
“Too bad,” Quinn said.
Fernandez flashed his handsome grin.
Quinn and Pearl exchanged glances, letting each other know that at the moment they had nothing more to ask. They let Fernandez know, too, and thanked him for his time.
“Sorry I couldn’t help,” he told Quinn, as they were going out the door.
“Ah, you never know,” Quinn said.
 
 
When they were back out on the hot sidewalk, Pearl said, “What do you make of it?”
“Fernandez might have seen the killer,” Quinn said. “Or he might have made the whole thing up.”
“You see Fernandez as the killer?” Pearl asked, surprised.
“Not likely. A lot of supers pry. He might have been lying about something to cover his ass, but I figure he’s the guy who found the body, and he’s nothing more. I’ll have Sal and Harold check to see if he’s got alibis for the times of the other murders, so we can cross him off our list.”
“Fernandez doesn’t
feel
like the killer.” Pearl said. “He passes the gut test.”
“Exactly.”
They continued along the sidewalk to the entrance of the building where the murder had taken place. The uniform who’d stood screening visitors was gone, as were the radio cars and CSU van that had been parked in front. The ambulance was nowhere in sight. Ann Spellman was on her way to the morgue, where she’d be the subject of intense scrutiny and expertise by Nift, the nasty little M.E. Nift should have more to tell Quinn soon. Renz was seeing to it that these killings got top priority.
Quinn absently fingered the wrapped illicit Cuban cigar in his shirt pocket, then realized what he was doing and quickly lowered his hand. He’d thought there’d be a chance to be alone for a while and smoke the cigar today, not figuring on Ann Spellman interfering with his plan. He felt like smoking it in the car when they were finished here, but he knew better. Pearl might erupt.
“I’d like to know who that woman at the building’s door was,” Pearl said.
“Or
if
she was.”
21
W
hen the super let them into Ann Spellman’s apartment, both Quinn and Pearl noticed a door near the end of the hall edge open a few inches and then close. Someone sneaking a peek at death.
Yet when the neighbors were questioned, they usually didn’t want to get involved and had little to say.
Quinn dismissed the super and closed the door behind them. The super seemed to want a look around the dead woman’s apartment, too. It made Quinn wonder if the man had entered and had his look-see earlier. It was odd how anything that had to do with a publicized murder victim held a certain attraction. Ann Spellman was dead and had died the hard way, so the super might have been unable to resist treading sacred carpet and hardwood, touching sacrosanct personal objects the recently deceased had touched.
The aftermath of violent death still resonated in the apartment, as if the tenant were sadly lingering and hesitant to leave. Quinn and Pearl each knew the other could feel it, and said nothing. The air was heavy and the only sounds were from traffic outside the building.
They set about carefully looking over the apartment, not hurrying but not wasting motion. Pros who knew their job.
They found no computer, but there was a Lexmark printer on a small table by the desk. On the desk pad was what looked like an indentation where a laptop might have regularly sat when it wasn’t traveling.
The contents of the desk did reveal that Ann Spellman had run up a sixteen-hundred-dollar Visa card balance, and that she worked for Clinton Industrial Designs, on East Fifty-fourth Street near Second Avenue.
With that information, and some personal notes and letters, they learned that she’d recently been fired, and gathered that she’d been having an affair with her boss, one Louis Gainer.
Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!
was scribbled in pen on the top sheet of a Post-it pad. Quinn thought it was a good bet that the object of the scribbling was Louis Gainer, and the affair was over. The split had probably happened recently, since the note hadn’t been disposed of when a better use arose for the pad.
The apartment’s kitchen was neat and clean except for an empty carry-out pizza box stuffed into a wastebasket surrounded by a scattering of crumbs on the tile floor. The spotlessly clean oven and meager contents of the refrigerator suggested that Ann Spellman had eaten out often, or had food delivered. A hardworking career woman. Until last night.
Nothing unusual in the medicine cabinet. Tylenol, a bent tube of toothpaste, dental floss, a bottle of antibiotic tablets with an expired date, mint mouthwash. On a top shelf were some morning-after pills. Cautious Ann Spellman. Not cautious enough. The pills that prevented life couldn’t prevent death.
The closet revealed a female mid-level executive’s wardrobe: slacks and blazers, modest blouses, and at least half a dozen pairs of high-heeled shoes. Black was the predominate color. There was the expected basic black dress, with flimsy straps and a neckline low enough that the garment kept slipping from its wire hanger whenever Quinn touched it.
There were also faded jeans, worn-down joggers, and a pair of blue Crocs—for weekend casual wear, no doubt. But most of Ann Spellman’s wardrobe wasn’t casual; it was conservative business wear. Not high-end designer clothes, but nonetheless expensive. Possibly she was as talented as Fernandez the super had suggested, and had held—and been fired from—a fairly responsible job.
A search of the dresser drawers netted nothing of significance. Tucked beneath conservative slacks, and more folded jeans and T-shirts in the bottom drawer, were leopard-print thong panties and a vibrator shaped like a penis.
Big whoop-de-do.
No whips, chains, leather outfits, or anything of that sort.
There were a couple of Robert B. Parker books on the bottom shelf of a bedside table, along with a book of photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright homes. Wright was on the cover in an old black-and-white photo, looking grim. As if he knew what had happened to Ann Spellman.
Pearl, standing by the dresser with its drawers still open, said, “She wore lots of thong underwear.”
“Do a lot of women wear that stuff?” Quinn asked. “It looks uncomfortable as hell.”
“That’s never stopped us,” Pearl said. “But I can’t answer your question. I’ve never seen a poll. I do know stores sell the hell out of thong underpants. Men go for women who like that kind of thing.”
“You’ve seen a poll?”
“They conduct them hourly in hook-up bars all over the city.”
“Hmm.”
“The thing is,” Pearl said, “Ann Spellman’s panties were a size too large for her.”
Quinn stood still and looked at Pearl, knowing where she was going.
“Right,” Pearl said. “They were the right size for Macy Collins. The size of all her other panties.”
Quinn should have realized it himself—Daniel Danielle usually left the corpses of his victims wearing the panties of his previous victim. For continuity, the Florida police profiler had said, which suggested the killer might be obsessive-compulsive.
Aren’t they all?
“Judging by the panty count I just made,” Pearl said, “the chances are better than fifty-fifty that the next victim will be wearing thong underwear the same size as what’s in this drawer.”
“I’d put it at sixty-forty,” Quinn said. “She must have gotten some kind of kick out of it, wearing her conservative business clothes over a thong.”
“Like half the working women in New York,” Pearl said.
“You really think so?”
“That’s what the polls say.”
“Who do they ask?”
“Men.”
“Ah.”
Quinn cupped his chin in his hand and glanced around the room. Ann Spellman seemed to fall within the amorphous definition of normal. Quinn had found no drug paraphernalia, serious S and M equipment, or extreme pornography. Nothing in her life suggesting danger.
Except, maybe, her recent firing from her job, and her breakup with Louis Gainer.
Quinn wondered which had come first.
Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!
The killer always enjoyed sipping an espresso at a sidewalk table at one of the city’s restaurants featuring outside dining. This Upper West Side restaurant, Spirit, had a wide, mustard-colored awning to ensure shade, and two large box fans providing something like a breeze. People were frequently walking past on the sidewalk beyond the black iron railing, a narrow passageway between the seating area and the traffic.
It was pleasant here, watching the hurrying pedestrians and the traffic on Amsterdam. The dinner crowd hadn’t yet arrived. There weren’t many other customers. A man and woman sat three tables away, leaning toward each other and engaged in intense conversation. The woman, with a small, shaggy dog resting at her feet, had her blond hair pinned up, and an oversized nose that made her unattractive. The man with her was also blond. He had a sparse ponytail, and was wearing jeans and a blue denim vest over a white T-shirt. They were both drinking beer from green bottles. Not far from them was a balding man who had a blue backpack resting beside his chair, and two men with heavy gray beards. The bearded ones were playing chess.
At a table near them sat a tall, thin man sipping what looked like iced tea and munching nuts from a small ceramic bowl.
The killer looked around his open netbook at the expanse of his glass-topped table and saw no nuts. Saw none on any of the other tables. He guessed you had to ask for them. He worked the computer’s touch pad, clicking the netbook’s cursor on the various pages of , one of the many websites that promised men the opportunity to meet whatever type of lonely woman they preferred. It was like browsing through a catalog. The killer found the website immensely entertaining. Tech was wonderful. Other people struggled with each new device or application that made its way to the market. Not the killer. He seemed to have been born to be a tech head.
“May I have some nuts?”
A waiter nodded and disappeared inside the restaurant.
The killer turned his attention to the two bearded men playing chess. They appeared to be in their sixties. Each was bent over the board, giving the game his rapt attention. One of them had several more pieces than the other. Traffic hummed and fumed past only a few feet from them, but they were oblivious to what was happening out in the street, beyond the shade of the awning. Right here, right now, the game was everything to them. Winning was paramount.
The killer had to smile. The chess players were completely unaware of him. They had no idea that going on very near them was a much more serious game of move and countermove. A game where lives were involved.
And deaths.
After another slow sip of espresso, the killer smiled even wider, at least on the inside.
He was contemplating how women, if you chose them carefully, became terrified and evasive when they knew they were being stalked, when they understood what was intended. They became truly desperate.
Then, at a certain point, they became played out and tired of watching and taking alternate routes, of double-checking locks, of constantly being cautious, of being afraid. They wanted it to happen, to be over. They welcomed it, whatever
it
was. They welcomed
him
.
Women. The perfect prey animal, surely made that way by God for the predators.
Of course, when they learned what it was really like, they changed their minds. Always. But too late.
They were like the prey animals on television nature channels that stood gasping and heaving after the chase, waiting for the inevitable because finally, on a primal level, they understood what and why they were. They would run no more. They accepted their predetermined end.
But when fang and claw were applied, when their last seconds arrived, they always struggled meagerly and futilely. A final and feeble burst of life force, not enough.
It interested him, that inevitable summoning of dying effort. Why did they cling so to every last tick of life? What did they know, or see, that frightened them so? A glimpse behind the curtain? Perhaps something looking back at them.
Or perhaps, nothing at all
He thought of Ann Spellman. Of how she’d fought so for her last few seconds of life. Of how her fingers had fluttered like a poignant good-bye at the end.
Of Frank Quinn and his dangerous band of misfit detectives.
Of Pearl.
God, he loved the game they were playing! A part of him worried that maybe he was beginning to love it too much and it cautioned him with inner voices. But for now he’d ignore those voices. He hated to use the word
fun
, because it seemed so inadequate to describe what he was capable of feeling. But the fact was—
The waiter reappeared, and the killer beckoned him with a languid wave of his hand.
“Some
nuts
, please.”

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