Frenzy (16 page)

33

T
he killer wanted to see if Weaver went someplace unexpected. Someplace where there would be privacy if he arranged for them to be alone.

It wasn't unexpected that she headed directly toward work at the offices of Q&A. Maybe she had paperwork to catch up on. Runaways to find, burglars to apprehend, killers to kill.

Weaver paused near a doughnut shop, and stood as if contemplating. It was still morning. Not so late that she shouldn't enjoy a breakfast doughnut. Or maybe she'd already had breakfast and was going to buy doughnuts for the other cops. They'd owe her something in return. Unless she was repaying a doughnut debt of her own. That was how cops thought; somebody always owed somebody. Doughnuts were the coin of their realm. They took that crap seriously.

As Weaver crossed the street toward the doughnut shop, the killer found a place where he could lean on a black painted bannister and pretend to study a map. He looked like a tourist today, even carrying a cloth bag advertising a Broadway show. A long-running revival of a revival starring a burned-out cast. Something a tourist would savor.

Through the doughnut shop's steamed window, he saw Weaver slide into a booth while balancing a mug of coffee and a plate containing several doughnuts.

All for herself.
Selfish bitch.

The killer settled in, knowing he'd be here awhile. Within a few minutes, he found himself getting hungry for a doughnut.

 

 

Quinn hung up the phone after his conversation with Renz. He hadn't told Renz about the box of bricks and straw that had been shipped from England, and he didn't mention the letters. They seemed to have disappeared, anyway.

Ida Tucker was still sitting patiently in her chair, her hands folded in her lap.

“Who do you think took the letters that were in the box?” Quinn asked her.

“Whoever took what else was in the box. Unless you think someone actually sent Willa a box containing nothing but bricks and straw all the way from England.”

Quinn thought it was possible that the box's original contents were stolen in England, before the box was shipped, but he didn't mention the possibility.

“What do you think happened to whatever was taken from the box?” he asked.

Ida gave her frail shrug. “It's a mystery.”

“Here's another one,” Quinn said. “Why did Andria Bell call Jeanine Carson several times from LaGuardia airport the day she died?”

“I wasn't aware that she had. Maybe Andria simply wanted to let Jeanine know she was in town. They
were
sisters.”

“That's true. DNA samples indicate that Andria and Jeanine were actually related by blood.”

Ida fixed icy eyes on Quinn, as if her lies were a match for his facts any day. “It isn't a pretty picture. It involves degradation and rape.”

Quinn tapped the sharp point of a pencil over and over on his desk and regarded Ida Tucker. She must have such ugly memories, know so much that she dreaded reliving even in her mind. Quinn decided not to make her paint that picture once again. Or the original picture, painted over.

Ida visibly swallowed. “Some of the foster homes the children were placed in were nightmares. When Robert and I decided to adopt, we met Jeanine. She was only ten years old. We had to have her. Then, when we learned she had a younger sister, we felt the kindest and best solution was to adopt both girls, raise them the rest of the way like the sisters they were.”

“Did it work out okay?”

“Yes. Until they encountered the madman in your city.”

“I apologize for my city,” Quinn said. He leaned forward and gently patted the back of her hand. “I mean that, dear.”

“I'm sure you do.”

“It's odd though, wouldn't you say, that both sisters would happen to encounter the same madman?”

“A giant statue of a woman with a torch, standing on a tiny island out in the ocean, is odd. Riding in trains under the ground is odd. A seriously undressed cowboy playing a guitar at a busy intersection is odd. A giant ape climbing a skyscraper is odd.”

“That last is just in the movies,” Quinn said.

“And the other three?”

“Well . . . I get your point.”

Ida stood up and smoothed her skirt. “If we're finished here, I'll go about the process of claiming my girls' remains.”

“One thing more,” Quinn said. “You never mentioned your adopted son, Winston Castle.”

For a moment Ida seemed to draw a blank. “Oh! Is that what he's calling himself now?”

“Yes. He owns a restaurant here in town.”

She waved a hand and smiled. “Good for him. He can be . . . rather aimless at times.” Her smile broadened. “Like the rest of us. Anything more?”

“No,” Quinn said, marveling. “You might drop by and see Winston.”

“I might. Thank you for bringing him to my attention.”

Quinn was finished talking to her anyway, so he let her call time. He had a feeling they'd have more conversations.

At the door, she paused and turned. “Will I have to identify the bodies?”

“They'll probably request that you do. It won't be as bad as you might imagine. They try to make it as easy as possible. Would you like me to send someone with you?”

“No,” she said, after giving it a few seconds' thought. “I've seen worse, though I can't remember when. I can manage this.”

“If
you
have any questions . . .” Quinn said. “Remember you have my number.”

“I do have questions,” Ida said. “Some I want answered, and some I don't.”

He watched her go out into the sauna the city could become after a summer rain.

One of the questions Quinn wanted answered was who were the other people on Jeanine's cell phone? Most of them, he was sure, were simply friends, business associates, neighbors, businesses she frequented. Checking each number might be a waste of time, but it had to be done. And who could know if a real clue might present itself?

And if this family was so close, why had Winston Castle pretended that Ida Tucker wasn't his mother? And why would Winston Castle's mother not mention their relationship? Or seem not to think much of it when Quinn brought it up?

The logical answer, it seemed to Quinn, was that she wanted to protect her son.

Mothers were like that.

34

W
hen Weaver left the doughnut shop, the killer counted to twenty and then fell in behind her.

All
the doughnuts. She'd eaten all of them on her plate, and then gone to the counter and ordered more doughnuts to go. The killer was amazed again that she could eat so prodigiously and still have such an impressive figure.

The doughnut boxes left no doubt where she was going, so he cut over a block and picked up his pace. There was no way she could somehow spot him following her if he was ahead of her.

By the time Weaver, balancing the two flimsy white boxes of doughnuts, crossed the street toward the converted building that housed the offices of Q&A Investigations, the killer had found a suitable observation post. He watched from where he was shielded by a van some workers were loading with cut-rate furniture.

It was starting to rain. Just a drizzle, but some of it was running inside his collar and down the back of his neck.

Before Weaver entered the building, an elderly woman exited. She tried holding the door open for Weaver, but Weaver won that contest, even with the boxes. The woman walked slightly bent by age, taking small, careful steps. Her head was bowed, as if she were thinking or depressed.

Weaver was almost certainly going to be at Q&A for a while. The killer fingered the cigarettes and lighter in his pocket. Thought about the knife taped to his leg.

Weaver could wait. This other woman, gray haired and obviously quite old, interested him. He was sure he'd seen her before, but the moving cloud shadows, the gray drizzle, hampered his view.

As the old woman left Q&A she turned to her left, away from the killer. He yanked his collar up higher, but it didn't help much.

He decided to give Weaver another day to live, so he might satisfy his curiosity about the old woman.

Where had he seen her before?

Then he had it.

The way she tilted her head to the side when she walked, as if she were a bird using her near eye to search for worms. The way she held her arms in tight to her body. A defensive stance.

Something about her reminded the killer of one of his victims at the Fairchild Hotel. Which one, though? He trudged after the woman, fastening the top button of his light raincoat.

It would come to him.

Wait! There was Weaver. She'd come out of Q&A's offices and turned left. It took the killer only a few seconds to realize Weaver was following the old woman who'd just exited Q&A.

Then he realized that an extraordinary piece of luck had come his way. Weaver, saved once by her illicit coupling with a cop, was now being practically handed to him. Two victims would serve his purpose nicely, especially if one was an old woman related to one of the Fairchild Hotel victims. That would further confound Quinn.

If it weren't for the drizzle that had become a mist, Weaver would surely have seen or sensed him approaching from behind.

But he was sure she hadn't.

He fell back, plotted, anticipated, enjoyed.

At Broadway, the old woman stopped and stood in a shop doorway.

Then Weaver surprised the killer. As he watched, she approached the woman and the two of them stood talking for a few minutes beneath the shop's awning, where it was relatively dry.

So she wasn't simply tailing the old woman; she was protecting her. A mission Quinn had no doubt assigned to her.

Weaver stepped out into the mist and waved both arms as if attempting to fly, trying to hail a cab. The killer smiled. On a rainy day in New York, cabs seemed to morph into objects unlike vehicles.

As soon as the two women gave up, they would take a subway. Crowded as the subways would be, he could easily follow them without being observed.

Then, miraculously, the laws of probability turned upside down, and the unthinkable occurred before the killer's eyes. A cab veered from the flow of traffic toward the curb and braked to a halt directly in front of Weaver. Weaver held the door open for the old woman, then scooted into the back of the car with her.

Watching the cab drive away, the killer ran out into the street, waving for another cab. One honked its horn at him and then almost ran him down. He jumped back onto the sidewalk, dragging one foot. Water sloshed into his shoe.

The killer simply wouldn't accept this.
He wouldn't!

He trudged over and stood beneath the shop awning where the two women had stood. The mist still reached him. He bitterly jammed his fists deep into his pockets. This was so like when he was a child, and nothing he did was right. He was an abomination. An unexpected and unwanted kind of horrible growth that had to be cut out of his mother's stomach.

Then he'd done something right.

Playing the dumbstruck, grieving child had been easy. The police had picked up Bill Phoenix and found the knife in his car, stained with the blood of Dwayne's father and Maude. Dwayne didn't have to make up much to describe details of Maude and Bill's secret affair.

Bill Phoenix knew he didn't have a chance, and Florida was a state that executed killers. He tried to evade the police in his white pool-service van, but didn't get far. He was apprehended in a motel parking lot.

Dwayne had inherited a multimillion-dollar trust that became his at the age of twenty-five. He'd established accounts under different identities and invested wisely, most often in art that he obtained surreptitiously through straw parties and then kept to and for himself. Much of the rest of his wealth was with various money management firms that he drew on from time to time. There was no reason anyone else should know his true wealth.

For years after his father's and Maude's deaths, he would dream about them writhing in the flames of hell. They would be aflame themselves, perhaps even clutching each other in their hopeless desperation. Screaming and dancing in their wild and terrible knowledge. Paying for each and every sin.

These were not nightmares.

 

 

Possibly all that money had spoiled the killer. That and his previous success and notoriety as D.O.A. By now, he was used to obtaining whatever he wanted. And he wanted Nancy Weaver.

The mist continued to send persistent trickles beneath his upturned collar and down the back of his neck. He ignored it. Head bowed, he made his way toward a subway stop, where it would be crowded but dry. Where he was sure luck would swing his way.

Nancy Weaver. He knew where she lived.

No matter how long he had to wait for her, he would wait. If she brought the uniformed cop home with her again, or another sexual partner, he would wait. He smiled his tight smile.

That Weaver didn't know he was waiting was immaterial. Soon she would belong to him.

So would the perfect woman who had no way of knowing his intention. She would someday become his most prized possession.

Women like Nancy Weaver were steps to the ultimate.

35

N
ancy Weaver was tired of being wet. After dropping Ida Tucker at the morgue, and offering to go in with her and lend support, Weaver had stayed in the cab and given the driver her address and the nearest cross street. Until the cab pulled away from the curb, she watched Ida Tucker, moving like a much younger woman in her high heels, pick her way through pedestrians and umbrellas. Then Weaver slumped with the side of her head against the window, and through half-closed eyes watched traffic joust with traffic.

 

 

It took Weaver's cab almost half an hour to reach the intersection near her apartment. Close enough. The short walk to her building she made in almost a dash.

So relieved was she to be almost home and dry, that she didn't notice the nearby figure step silently from the shadows. His timing was exquisite. As Weaver pulled the heavy door open and moved inside to the foyer, he matched her step for step, all the time raising his long-bladed knife to her throat.

He was up against her before she knew it. She felt the knife point jab at the side of her neck, near the carotid artery, and smelled and felt the warmth of his breath, the fetid wetness of his long raincoat. The coat was black, and held the odors of the street: exhaust fumes, and the cloying garbage scents of whatever was in the pavement and set free by the rain. He had brought the night in with him.

The knife blade never wavering, he guided her up the stairs and along the hall. No one came around a corner, or happened to open their door and see them.

As they entered her apartment she heard him kick the door shut behind them.

The lights were off, and her assailant wanted to keep them that way. With the blinds open as they were, inside light would create quite a show for anyone down in the street who happened to look up, or for someone in one of the buildings across the street.

“We're walking to your bedroom,” he said, pressing harder with the knife. The length of his body was tight against hers. She had no choice but to move forward. To lead the way. She knew that once he got her in the bedroom and down, she was lost.

As he propelled her forward, she pulled her purse open. Its clasp was magnetic and made no noise. At the same time, she veered slightly, toward where she knew the hassock sat near the corner of the sofa. It was low, and almost the color of the carpet, difficult to see in the dimness.

“I hope you're not dumb enough to—” the killer began, then tripped over the hassock that she'd barely brushed against.

Weaver spun while pushing free of the arm and hand wielding the knife, throwing herself forward. As she fell, she dumped the contents of her purse out in front of her on the floor. This had to be fast. She wouldn't have time to root through the purse.

The killer was still frozen with surprise, but that would last only another few seconds.

She fell with an “Oomph!” onto the array of items that had spilled out of her purse onto the carpet. One of the largest objects was pressing against her rib cage, just beneath her right breast. It was either her wallet or her small .22-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun.

She rolled to the side, fumbling for whatever it was, and was dismayed to see that it was her wallet.

But lying right next to it was the small nickel-plated semiautomatic. Her hand darted toward the gun.

The killer tried to stamp on her hand, but just missed and merely thumped his foot on the carpet.

He'd figured the odds even before Weaver had considered them. He made the errant stamp serve as his first step toward the door.

He was opening the door as she was snatching up the gun.

He was through it as she aimed.

She knew the door was closing behind him but fired anyway. The shot was like a loud slap with an immediate double echo as the bullet penetrated the slammed door.

Weaver, trembling, was sitting up now, gripping the small gun with both hands, still aimed at the door. But she knew she couldn't fire a second shot. Not blind, through a closed door. The area outside the door had been momentarily blocked when the killer had closed it behind him. Now that space might be filled by a curious neighbor.

Or by Weaver's assailant, crumpled on the hall floor, dead or wounded.

She got shakily to her feet and plodded toward the door, keeping the gun raised and ready. When she got close she saw the neat round bullet hole in the door, about four feet above the floor. With the gun in her right hand, she used her left to rotate the knob and pull the door open slowly.

The bullet had chipped out a long vertical splinter as it passed through the door on the other side. Weaver opened the door another six inches and peered out into the hall.

Nothing. No one was lying on the floor. There was no sign of blood. Not enough noise had been made by her small-caliber gun to rouse any of the neighbors. They might have heard a door slamming, making a funny kind of sound, but so what? Maybe a family argument or lovers' quarrel. Maybe something even more serious. Nothing they'd want to be involved in.

Weaver walked to the stairwell and back, and saw no blood on the hall's tiled floor. Apparently her shot had missed the killer entirely.

She had little doubt that her assailant had been D.O.A. For the past several days she'd been well aware that she was being watched, followed. Not all the time, but sometimes almost every day.

Helen the profiler had warned them that D.O.A. might try to get to Quinn through Pearl or Weaver—maybe even Pearl's daughter Jody. All three women were supposed to be taking special care.

But was special care enough to stop a special killer?

Her heart still hammering, Weaver trudged back to her apartment to phone Quinn. She wished she'd gotten a better look at the killer's face, but in the dim light all she'd seen was a shadowed figure. Dark hair, but she didn't know how dark. Average height, maybe slightly on the tall side. Strong. She remembered the strength almost humming like electricity through his body as he'd held her fast to him and near death at the point of a knife.

He was strong beneath his damp raincoat, and he knew what he was doing.

As she got closer to her apartment door she looked again at the vertical splintered exit hole made by the bullet she'd fired. The building's doors were staggered. When she looked to the opposite side of the hall, she couldn't see anyplace where the bullet might have entered and embedded itself in the wall. Which suggested that the shot she'd gotten off might be lodged in her assailant.

Weaver turned again toward her apartment. She would need a new door, but not immediately. This one would still prove a barrier when locked.

She wouldn't have to change her locks. Obviously, the killer hadn't had a key, or he wouldn't have had to force his way in behind her. He would have been waiting for her inside her apartment.

But Weaver was curious. She went to one of the dimly glowing ornate sconces on the hall wall and reached for where she kept a spare door key on top of the ancient brass. The key she would use if she lost her purse, along with her entire set of keys. Or if, for some inexplicable reason, the key she usually used simply didn't work.

The key wasn't there.

She stood on tiptoe and felt around again for it, this time more carefully.

Plenty of dust. No key.

So he might well have had her spare key but still chose to wait for her outside her apartment and force his way inside with her. Frighten her all the more.

But she knew that was probably wild imagination. It was unlikely the killer planned so intricately and trusted so much to what
might
occur.

She locked the door, using the same key on knob lock and dead bolt, even though the killer might well possess her spare door key, then shoved the heavy sofa in front of it. She placed some dishes on the sofa arm so they'd fall and break, and awaken her if someone tried to visit her during the night.

Someone with a key.

Weaver would wait until tomorrow morning, when the shops were open, to call a locksmith.

She wouldn't wait to call Quinn.

After talking to Quinn, she would call Renz.

It struck her as odd that she wanted to tell Quinn first. She was NYPD and first of all worked for Renz.

Didn't she?

She decided she'd better call Renz first.