Carnage: Short Story (3 page)

The motel room’s sheer curtains waltzed gracefully with the night sea breeze. It wasn’t completely dark outside, but the sun had been down long enough that the horizon was black against a darkening sky.

Corey, he’d said his name was. But it always took him a few seconds to react to it. Pat doubted now that it was his real name.

And she wasn’t really sure she’d met him on Facebook. It might have been Twitter. Or maybe one of the other social or business sites online. However they’d first made contact, he must have hacked into her computer and found out loads of information about her, because when they’d met, it seemed that within minutes they were old friends. Or at least acquaintances.

It didn’t bother her much, his romping around the contents of her hard drive. Most guys could do that now, and Pat had been guilty of it a few times herself. She didn’t have anything to hide. At least not anything she had put online, so what was the difference? It was all part of the hooking-up game, and at least it was a part you could manage.

Pat knew it was supposed to be dangerous, meeting real people from the virtual world, but this seemed different. And certainly not dangerous. Corey seemed to be one of the kindest, gentlest men she’d met on- or offline. His smile was brightened with a touch of eagerness, almost as if he were a puppy (or a dolphin) badly in need of affection.

They’d had a few drinks at a beachside bar. A few more. Then he’d suggested watching the sunset and going to dinner at the Sea Sail restaurant. It was an upper-class restaurant, which meant Pat would have to change from her beach robe and floppies. He’d waited for her to suggest that they drop by her motel so she could get into something suitable. It was only right down the beach, near where the tall masts of some sailboats bobbed.

She hadn’t found it suspicious that he was already in dress slacks and an unstructured sport coat, leather deck shoes. No tie. But who wore a tie in Nickleton? And he was carrying a large beach bag, as if he could change into swimming trunks in no time and fling himself into the surf. She could imagine him running loosely and gracefully toward the water, crashing into a wave that crashed into him. Showing the sea who was boss. It was a nice image.

No one paid any attention to them as they passed the windows of the motel lobby, then went down a slanted brick walkway to the lineup of identical blue doors. The smell of chlorine was evident. There was a pool nearby.

Pat worked the key and they entered. Unsurprisingly, the entire back wall of the room was window, framed at both ends by floor-length green drapes and sheer curtains.

When Pat switched on the overhead light, Corey went to the window and closed both the drapes and curtains. The air was still and the sea was only a whisper now.

Pat smiled at him, her heart fluttering. He wasn’t handsome in the conventional sense; it was more that there was nothing wrong with him. All the pieces fit. It gave him a kind of odd anonymity.

“You interested in privacy?” she asked.

“It’s one of my favorite things,” he said.

“That why you call yourself Corey?”

He smiled. “You guessed.”

“It’s okay if you want to remain anonymous for a while.” She gave him a serious look. “Long as you aren’t married.”

He widened his eyes in mock horror. “That’s something you don’t have to worry about.”

She smiled in a way that told him she believed him.

“I’ll throw something on and we’ll go to dinner,” she said. She wasn’t some slut who jumped in and out of bed without first at least breaking bread with a man and getting to know him.

On the other hand . . .

She was easy to bring down. When he drew her closer, she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead he waited until she was breathing out, then drove his fist deep into her stomach. Her breath whooshed out of her. She couldn’t inhale. Couldn’t stand up straight. Her eyes bulged as she tried desperately to draw in oxygen.

He gripped her under both arms and kept her from curling up on the floor, the way they always tried to do. Instead he heaved her onto the bed and in no time had her wrists taped behind her back. When he was sure she was breathing almost well enough to scream, he taped her mouth. Screams turned to moans, not even as loud as the sea.

He drew from his beach bag a large folding knife and expertly—even artfully—cut her clothes so they slipped easily from her body. When her legs were bare, he taped them together as he had her wrists. She was lying on her back, her hands behind her. She couldn’t move or turn over with her knees pressed together. He could read her thoughts: “
At least he’s not going to rape me.”

She couldn’t guess that he wanted—would take—more than that.

He laid the knife next to her on the bed. Then he drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and took one out. He worked one of those cheap plastic lighters and touched flame to tobacco. Blew smoke off to the side and smiled. It was not at all his usual shy smile.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m a nonsmoker.”

It was past noon the next day, and he was long gone from Nickleton, when Patricia Angelina’s tortured body was found.

A motel maid discovered her dead in her room, taped and still on her blood-soaked mattress. The maid wasn’t the screaming type, but she did vomit when she saw the letters
D.O.A.
carved on the dead girl’s forehead. She had read about that killer sicko, and another wave of nausea hit her before she got out of there and told Ernie up in the office it was time to call the police. One look at her eyes and pasty complexion and he knew it was past time.

The killer heard the news on the car radio, driving north. The mellow male radio voice said that police were still searching for clues. The killer knew they wouldn’t find anything worthwhile. He’d been careful with fingerprints, DNA, that sort of thing. He watched plenty of cop TV and knew what was necessary to break away clean from a crime scene.

When the road curved inland, and he came to a small area of beach where signs said
SCENIC LOOKOUT,
he pulled the car over and parked at an angle at a curb, near some picnic benches.

There was a nice view of the beach from there, with sailboats in the distance, but the killer concluded that it was nothing special. Which explained why he was the only one at the scenic outlook.

He removed from his pocket the cheap drugstore disposable phone he’d bought, punched in Quinn’s cell phone number, and idly walked toward the gentle surf.

When Quinn identified himself, the killer simply said Patricia Angelina’s name, and then broke the connection.

Quinn would know who’d called. The killer was sure of that.

He walked closer to the sea and threw the phone underarm into the water. It skipped on the sea like a stone, and then sank.

He remembered what Pat had said about surfing and texting and smiled.

Some dolphin.

A few of the New York media carried the Nickleton story. One local daily news program,
Minnie Miner ASAP,
mentioned the fact that what had become a string of ocean-side murders was moving along the coast toward New York. Quinn, and Renz, knew it might not be long before the nasty news genie was out of the bottle.

“Something in the mail for you,” Pearl said.

They were in the living room of the brownstone, and she’d just brought up what looked like the usual assortment of mail from the box downstairs.

Quinn held out his hand and she placed in it a small package wrapped in brown paper and tape.

“Looks familiar,” Pearl said. “Except for the North Carolina postmark. Same mechanical looking untraceable printing.”

“Where’s Jodi?”

“Outside. She’s a big enough girl she can be in on this,” Pearl said about her daughter, the attorney.

“If she happens to walk in on it,” Quinn said.

Pearl didn’t reply, knowing it wasn’t the time to get into an argument about what Jodi should or shouldn’t know. She watched Quinn sit on the sofa and, leaning forward, use a penknife he carried and carefully open the package.

Inside were a wadded sheet of Nickleton newspaper and a plastic chess pawn.

They were in the Q&A offices, the part that resembled a squad room, and that prospective clients first saw when they came in through the street door. It was a little past nine in the morning. Fedderman and Quinn were the only ones there.

A leather sole scuffed on concrete outside and the street door swished open.

“He’s working his way up the East Coast,” Jerry Lido said when he’d made his way all the way into the office. He’d bumped the door frame as he entered.

Quinn figured Lido was hungover. Not drunk. Lido worked best when he was soused, but he never came into the office that way.

Hardly ever.

His shirt was sloppily tucked in and he needed a shave. Since he’d obviously been drinking last night, Quinn listened closely to what he had to say.

Lido plopped himself down and booted up his computer. “Another murder farther north on the southeast coast,” he said.

“A killer with a compass,” Fedderman said.

Lido ignored him, as if maybe he figured Fedderman was an hallucination. “He started his latest killing binge in Miami, then maybe one in Pompano Beach, then Spindrift, and now Nickleton.” He brought a map up on his computer monitor. “He’s traveling up the coast, stopping and killing approximately the same distance between murders.”

Quinn paid closer attention, and walked over to look past Lido’s shoulder at the map.

“The murders were committed here, here, here, and here,” Lido said, pointing with a tremulous forefinger.

“That doesn’t look like the same distance between them,” Quinn said.

“I’m not referring to driving distance,” Lido said, “though he’s almost certainly driving. Sometimes the road curves along with the coast.”

“You’re saying as the crow flies,” Fedderman said.

Lido grinned. “More like the flamingo. And while the distances aren’t exactly the same, they increase proportionally.”

“So he’s traveling north, right now,” Quinn said. “Driving farther between each murder.”

Lido shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. He’s in a pattern, like so many serial killers, but we can’t be sure he realizes that. Or that he follows it every time.”

“He’s a beach killer,” Fedderman said. “That’s another pattern. He kills on or near a beach.”

Lido shrugged. “The Miami murder was several blocks away from the beach.”

“So what do you think it means?” Quinn asked Lido. “This crow’s—or flamingo’s—flight distance instead of car odometer distance?”

“Means he’s using a map,” Lido said. “Like we are.”

Fedderman walked over and the three of them stood at the computer as Lido pointed to Nickleton, and then traced his nicotine yellowed finger over the map to the projected site of the next murder.

It was the small beachside town of Del Moray.

None of them had ever heard of it.

Pearl, Sal, and Harold arrived, and Quinn explained the situation to them.

“There might be something to it,” Sal said, rubbing his chin. “Or it could be coincidence.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Harold said. “Not if you’re a mystic or a cop.”

Quinn wondered what Harold meant by that. Maybe only Harold knew.

Pearl said, “If the killer is on his way, or planning on going to Del Moray, he’ll be looking for his next victim.”

Quinn knew where she was trying to take the conversation and didn’t like it. “Don’t get any ideas about being bait,” he said. “Besides, you’re not his type.”

But he knew she could be bait, easily. Her features were those of a much younger woman, and her lithe, buxom body only strengthened the illusion. Quinn decided to leave the age issue alone.

“You can’t stop a woman from dying her hair,” Pearl said.

“All the killer’s victims have been on the social networks online,” Lido said.

“I can join them,” Pearl said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Quinn told her.

“But we’re going to do it,” Pearl said.

“What makes you think so?”

Pearl smiled. “Because it might work.”

Del Moray wasn’t much to look at. Its police department and a strip shopping center faced the public beach across the street. The beach widened in both directions, but some of the clapboard houses and small businesses backed up to it. It was still technically mostly public beach, but few people strayed north to directly across from police headquarters, or south to the line of motels, all low two stories so the view of the Atlantic wouldn’t be spoiled.

It wasn’t a large stretch of beach, and Pearl was a beauty as a blonde. She would definitely be noticed. Propped on the bridge of her nose were knockoff Prada sunglasses, thick-framed and dark enough that you couldn’t tell for sure where she was looking. In her white-and-blue terrycloth beach bag was her ID, a pullover shirt, a pair of rubber flip-flops, and her Glock handgun rolled in a towel. She wore a two-piece blue bathing suit that Quinn didn’t approve of but that kept catching his eye.

Quinn thought maybe they had overdone it. The way most of the males on the beach were looking at Pearl, it would be difficult to choose a prospective killer.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened the first day, or the second, except that Pearl got a nice tan.

Sal was pretending to sunbathe and listen to music on an earbud, not too close to where Pearl lounged, but close enough to get to her if somebody tried to abduct her. The most likely thing to happen would be for the killer to strike up a conversation. That had happened a couple of times. One of the men turned out to be a Del Moray cop. The other was interrupted by his wife and departed chastised.

Pearl seemed to be enjoying herself.

It was six o’clock, and she’d left the beach and was changing clothes in her room, when it happened. The key grated in the lock, and a man entered. He was wearing dark pleated slacks and a white shirt and looked like one of the employees who were around the motel doing odd jobs.

Except he was holding a gun.

As soon as Pearl looked into his eyes, she knew who he was. Not only that. It was also obvious that he knew who
she
was. Her legs went rubbery. Fedderman or Sal, or whoever’s shift it was, should have seen the man enter her room.

But she knew her motel-room door couldn’t be watched all the time.

“No one saw me come in,” her visitor said, reading her mind. “I entered this morning with the maid and stayed.” He used a foot to lift the skirt on the bed and revealed the maid’s dead arm and hand.

“Now what?” Pearl asked, in a wavering voice not quite her own, wondering if she could reach her beach bag and Glock before the killer could react.

She decided it was too risky.

“Listen,” she said, thinking she might brave it out. “I’m—”

He stepped closer and punched her in the stomach. So fast. No one would have had time to react, to stop the punch.

Struggling to breathe, Pearl dropped to her knees. He produced a large role of duct tape, but he didn’t tape her in his usual fashion. While she was still paralyzed and breathless from the punch, he taped her arms to her sides, her hands to the outside tops of her thighs. Then he taped her ankles and knees.

She was breathing through her nose with effort now, wondering if she’d be able to scream. He smiled at her, knowing what she was thinking, and a wide rectangle of tape was slapped over her lips. More tape over her mouth, then wound around the back of her neck and head. No scream was going to erupt from her. It was all she could do to keep calm and breathe.

He rolled her under the bed then, as if she were a log, and she found herself lying shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, with the dead maid. She saw the glint of the maid’s bulging eye and knew the woman had been strangled, which was why there was no blood. Except for their two bodies, it was tidy under the bed.

Pearl knew that audacious as it was, this had all been planned, and it was working. That scared the hell out of her.

A few minutes later, she thought she heard the door to her room open and close, but couldn’t be sure.

“Where the hell is Pearl?” Quinn asked, standing outside the motel’s cocktail lounge. They had a clear view of the beach. It was late in the day but sunbathers still lounged, children still splashed, bodybuilders still strutted, lovers still used the cover of the incoming waves to grope each other. A larger than usual swell assaulted the beach and destroyed a sand castle.

Sal shrugged. “She left the beach more than half an hour ago. I looked in her room. She’s not there, and that big cloth bag she carries like a purse is gone.”

“Maybe she drove out to get something to eat,” Fedderman suggested. He’d been assigned to watch Pearl after Sal, and suspected she had deliberately given him the slip. She was like that, tended to go off on her own. The only one who might buck Quinn.

“She would have alerted us to that,” Quinn said. He glanced at his watch. “She’s been gone at least half an hour with no contact. It doesn’t make sense.”

“She’s not on the beach,” Sal said. “She’s supposed to tell us before she goes there.” Sal looked thoughtful. “Besides, her swimming suit is there in her room. Hanging over the shower rod in the bathroom and drying out.”

No one said anything for a long time. Fedderman had been the last one to see Pearl enter her room.

“Jesus!” Quinn finally said. “If—”

He was interrupted by the rasping of his cell phone. He wrested it from his pocket and looked at it, prepared to say Pearl’s name. But it wasn’t Pearl on the phone.

It was the Del Moray Police department.

“This is—”

“I know who you are,” Quinn said. “Is—”

“And I know who you are. At least I was told. Detective Frank Quinn from New York?”

“Yes. Listen—”

“I’m chief of police Alfonso Desoto, and my office was given this number to call by an anonymous source. A nutcase, we figured, until we went where the caller directed us.”

“Oh, Jesus!” Quinn said again, under his breath. “Where are you, Chief?”

“Number 7 Jacaranda, off of Main,” Desoto said. “It’s a green frame house with a lot of flowers out front. A trellis of roses near the driveway. About a block off the beach.”

“I’m on my way,” Quinn said.

“We’ll be waiting out back. You won’t have any trouble finding us. It’s the house with the woman’s body in the pool.”

The house on Jacaranda was just as Desoto had described, only he hadn’t mentioned the bees buzzing around the flowers out front. Fedderman made a wide detour to get to the backyard. Quinn took a straight line and was somehow unnoticed by the bees.

A uniformed Del Moray cop stood by a swimming pool with his arms crossed. An almost ridiculously handsome Latin man in a lightweight tailored suit stood near him, watching the two detectives approach. He had on a white shirt and blue tie, amazingly dry and unwrinkled by the heat. His shoes were two tones of tan with a high gloss.

Quinn nodded to the uniform, then to the clotheshorse.

“Quinn?” asked the clotheshorse.

Quinn introduced himself and Fedderman. The clotheshorse said he was Chief Desoto, and that the uniform’s name was Beckle.

Quinn wasn’t looking at either one of them. About five feet from where Beckle stood was what appeared to be Pearl’s beach bag. Beyond it, in the pool, floated a nude blond woman. She was facedown, and unmoving except with the slight play of water in the breeze.

As he swallowed his heart and moved toward the pool, Quinn saw that the beach bag was open. Pearl’s ID and Glock were visible.

Desoto clutched Quinn’s upper arm with surprising strength.

But it was something else that slowed Quinn. Something about the dead woman.

Beckle used a long hook pole to move the body closer to the edge of the pool. Quinn saw the expected cigarette burns and knife cuts. Then Beckle bent down and turned the dead woman’s head so Quinn could see her face.

The first thing he noticed was
D.O.A.
carved in her forehead.

The second thing was that she wasn’t Pearl.

Quinn let out a long breath. He realized he was sweating so that his clothes were soaked.

“You okay?” Desoto asked. “You know this Pearl?”

“It isn’t Pearl,” Quinn said. Not a religious man, he still felt like crossing himself. God must get a lot of that, he thought. Pleas for mercy . . . gushing gratitude. Or crushing depression.

Desoto looked at the beach bag, looked at Quinn. “We didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure.”

“You can be sure now.”

“Then the unlucky one in the pool is the woman who goes with this address,” he said. “Audrey Simmons. Twenty-seven, single, lives—lived—alone.”

“Everything fits the victim profile,” Quinn said, glancing back at the pool.

Desoto nodded. “We know about the D.O.A. killer. Didn’t think he’d visit Del Moray, though. You’ve been tracking the bastard, and probably know more about him than we do.” He moved an arm of the well-cut suit to take in the pool with its floating corpse. A silver cuff link winked in the sun. “What you see is what we got. That and a few more nuggets of info on the victim.”

“I want it,” Quinn said. “Even if we already have it.”

Desoto cocked his head toward where a metal table with four webbed chairs sat beneath an oversized umbrella. The umbrella had fringe that the breeze occasionally ruffled.

“You’ve probably got more to tell me than I’ve got to tell you,” Desoto said. “Let’s sit there in the shade and have a talk.”