Frenzy (27 page)

58

“I
see the same creep watching us whenever we go jogging,” Beth Swift said to her husband, Ben.

They were in their apartment kitchen. It was painted pale yellow and had a single window that looked out on an air shaft. The kitchen was the only thing about the apartment that wasn't ultramodern and expensive. Rehabbing it was the next thing on their budget, starting with granite countertops.

Ben stood at a Formica counter next to the refrigerator and continued building sandwiches of cold cuts and vegetables. He was taking his time, obviously deriving some pleasure from his task.

“Most likely you're the one he's watching,” he said, laying on blood sausage, lettuce, pickle loaf. He didn't have to be careful about ingredients; Beth enjoyed his monstrous health-and-energy sandwiches as much as he did.

“Am I supposed to feel complimented?”

“In a yucky kind of way.”

“Either way, I don't like it. I'm thinking about jogging over to him and asking if we know each other. Just to see what he says.”

“You'll probably fluster him and scare him away.” Ben added layers of cheese, and then topped off the sandwich with perhaps the most important ingredient. The second slice of Asiago bread, with cheese-flavored, toasted crust. “You can have that effect on people.”

“Only those who need scaring,” she said.

He added tomato slices and spread some mayonnaise. It took a certain touch, making a sandwich like this. A certain harmony of taste and texture. This was to be their supper. Along with a good white wine. Some of their friends thought they were crazy; doing all that exercising, then shoveling in all those calories. Beth and Ben, who kept almost hourly counts of calories in, calories out, figured they knew what they were doing. Like so many things, it was a balancing act.

It was also, in a way, economical. Because one of Ben's custom sandwiches provided at least two meals.

Beth and Ben had what many people would consider blah jobs. She copyedited advertising, and he was an accountant at a car-rental agency. So they figured a little eccentricity in their lives was a good thing.

They talked no more about the man who might be watching one, the other, or both of them on their daily runs. Ben figured Beth had forgotten about confronting him, but if she hadn't that was okay, too. It might be interesting to see how the man would react. Beth's unabashed directness was a quality Ben liked in her. Adored, actually.

After eating, they put the remaining portions of their sandwiches, and what was left of the wine—half the bottle—in the yellowed refrigerator Beth so looked forward to replacing. She knew where to put the wine on the top shelf so its temperature would be just right after it sat out for fifteen minutes.

Ben settled into
his
chair and watched the news on TV—more about the nutcase torturing and killing women. Wasn't there always some sicko like that operating in New York? Why couldn't they spot those characters ahead of time and do something about them before they went around killing people?

After the news the couple walked to an art theater in the neighborhood that showed indie movies. There was a Woody Allen film playing there, about three beautiful women in Spain. After the movie, maybe they'd kill the rest of the wine, then go to bed and make love.

Sometimes Beth thought Woody Allen should make a movie about their lives. She'd mentioned that to Ben. He'd thought maybe Quentin Tarantino.

 

 

In another part of town, business was brisk at the Far Castle. When he wasn't in the kitchen spurring on the cooks, Winston Castle, looking like a chef in a PBS special, smiled fiercely as he dashed from table to table, reassuring some diners that their food would arrive soon, making sure others were enjoying their meals. This also gave Castle a chance to get outside, since the evening was pleasantly cool and the outside tables were fully occupied. Still, he was sweating from his effort.

He'd assured a well-dressed man, accompanied by a woman who looked like a tramp, that their lamb chop dinners were minutes from being ready, when he glanced across the street.

The man in the gray car was still parked directly opposite the restaurant. He was staring at the Far Castle, watching what was happening. He seemed to be watching Winston Castle in particular.

Castle veered away and stood beneath an arbor of grape wines, where the diners wouldn't notice him. He got out his iPhone, went to contacts, and pressed
Quinn.

Quinn picked up almost immediately. “What's up, Winston?”

“You said to call you if I noticed anything unusual,” Castle said.

“So what's unusual?”

“Maybe it's nothing, but this man in a gray car is parked right across the street and staring over at me.”

“Has he been there long?”

“Yes and no. He seems to come and go.”

“You sure he's looking at you?”

“Reasonably so, yes. Although I can't see his features, I feel his eyes on me.”

Quinn couldn't imagine that, but let it pass. “Has this happened before?”

“Yes. Too often for it to be my natural paranoia. And I have no idea how many times he was there before I noticed him.”

“What about Maria? Might he be observing her?”

“She's in the office, not visible.”

“What kind of car is it?”

“I'm not sure. It's gray. Looks like it might be a . . . well, anything. Not new but not old. A midsized, four-door sedan.”

Average, average.
“Unmarked police car?”

“Not impossible, but it doesn't smell that way.”

Quinn decided not to ask Winston what that meant. “Is the man alone?”

“Excellent question.” Castle moved over and peered around the arbor vines, across the street where traffic was running heavy now.

The car was gone.

“He left.”

“You don't sound relieved, Winston.”

“When you live as I do, you learn to smell danger. That was danger.”

“Isn't that from a Humphrey Bogart movie?”
Isn't your entire family from a Humphrey Bogart movie?

“You're the one who wanted to know about anything unusual,” Castle said “And we hired you for security.”

“You hired me to help locate a marble bust. A man looking at your restaurant then driving away doesn't seem relevant.”

“It was the
way
he was looking.”

“I thought you couldn't make out his features?”

Castle sighed. “You needed to be here.”

“If he returns, call me again.”

“Then what?”

“Then I'll come there.”

Castle made a
humph!
sound, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and looked across the street again.

The gray car was still gone.

The danger lingered.

Castle wasn't reassured. He knew that Quinn considered him and his entire family dramatic posers. So what if they were? Plenty of people acted out their own dramatic lives. There was—and Winston Castle firmly believed this—an art to it. It was
life!

He adjusted his towering chef's cap.

 

 

After breaking the connection with Winston Castle, Quinn used his cell to call Sal Vitali.

Seated at an outdoor table at the Far Castle, Sal answered his phone quickly, before it could disturb any of the other diners.

Quinn spoke first. “See anything of a guy in a gray car parked across the street and scoping out somebody in the restaurant?”

“I'm at an outside table and did notice a car parked across the street for a while, with the driver in it. Next time I checked, he was gone. There was a group of three over there for a while, too, looking over the place, maybe searching for somebody, then they moved on.”

“What about that group?” Quinn asked.

“Nothing about them. That's my point. People stare across the street at this restaurant all the time. Maybe they're looking for somebody, or maybe they're trying to make out the specials on the board in front.”

“So the guy in the gray car didn't seem suspicious?”

“Not particularly, but maybe you should talk to Harold. If the same guy in the same car was surveying the place during Harold's watch, too, it could be we've got something.”

“Winston Castle says he smells danger.”

Sal laughed. “What he smells are spices from his own kitchen. The danger is from calories.”

“Nevertheless,” Quinn said.

“Calories can kill,” Sal said, in his hoarse smoker's voice.

After talking to Sal, Quinn called Harold Mishkin and woke him up.

“Sorry to pull you out of a deep well,” Quinn said, “but Winston Castle called and said he's worried some guy in a gray car is watching the restaurant. Or somebody at the restaurant. Sal's seen the car, too. I'm wondering if you saw it on your watch.”

“I saw it,” Harold said. “It caught my attention 'cause the driver never got out. I couldn't make out what make the car was, or the plate numbers. It wasn't new, though. I could tell that by its styling. Maybe five or six years old.”

“Anything unusual about it?”

“Maybe,” Harold said. “It sort of smelled like danger.”

When Quinn was finished talking with Harold, he used his cell phone to call Nancy Weaver.

“You know anything about being a food server?” Quinn asked.

“You mean waitress?”

“If you do.”

“I waited tables at a Smokey Torrito long, long ago. Earning my way through school.”

“What the hell is a Smokey Torrito?”

“They went out of business a long time ago,” Weaver said. “I wasn't responsible.”

Quinn said, “Brush up on your skills.”

59

B
eth Swift closed the drapes all the way so no light from the street below could filter into the bedroom.

The drapes were heavy. She and Ben liked complete darkness when they slept. And they enjoyed almost complete silence. Only a few muffled sounds from the street made their way into the bedroom.

It was well past midnight, and almost always by this time Beth was in what she figured was REM sleep. The most valuable kind. On an ordinary night, she'd be lying untroubled next to Ben, as good as unconscious. Beth had no idea why she couldn't sleep tonight.

Ben was certainly experiencing REM sleep. His breathing was deep and regular. So much so that she was afraid he might begin to snore.

Beth had set in her mind a final imprint of her path back to the bed. She gave the heavy drapes a final adjustment, then in total darkness and by memory returned to her side of the bed.

She lay down carefully, making sure she didn't disturb Ben. The bed springs squeaked, but softly. It was a king-sized bed, so there was enough space between them that her weight didn't shift the mattress beneath him.

His breathing became slightly irregular, but within a few seconds returned to its previous steady bellows sound.

Beth lay on her back and stared up toward a ceiling she couldn't see. Complete blackness. Her husband warm beside her. A heaven with everything in place. She felt drowsier now. Easy in body and mind. She felt sleep approach like a hesitant suitor, taking its time.

That was okay. She was relaxed and comfortable and in no hurry.

It was reassuring and in its way delightful to lie staring into the unbroken darkness and listen to Ben's breathing and her own. As if they were one being, taking turns within itself.

Gradually the muffled sounds of the city faded away. The faint, rhythmic hissing of Ben's breathing and her own was comforting and conducive to sleep.

Idly, half asleep, Beth amused herself by attempting to fix her breathing in exactly the same rhythm as her husband's, but she found it impossible.

She couldn't quite make the adjustment. Ben's inhalations and exhalations were deeper and of longer duration. The hissing of her breathing didn't quite match his, so that—

Something was wrong.
She knew it.

Her heart was ice. Terror had come before knowledge. She was completely awake and hyperalert. Listening. Dreading. Staring wide-eyed into total blackness. Knowing now without doubt what she was hearing.

There was a third sound of someone breathing in the dark.

60

“T
hey didn't show up for their tai chi exercises in the park,” Renz said. “Then they didn't answer their cell phones.”

“That was enough to send the super to investigate?” Quinn asked.

Renz nodded, his chin sinking into the smooth pink flesh of his neck. “With these two, yes. They took their tai chi seriously. Took everything yuppie and healthy seriously. They might have lived to a hundred and ten.”

A CSU unit was on the way, along with an ME and transport for the bodies. The uniform who'd caught the call was standing outside in the hall, to greet and guide the oncoming rush of specialists that sometimes reached murder crime scenes faster than flies.

Not this time, though, Quinn noticed. He leaned over and waved his hand to shoo a fly from the open eye of the woman. It returned to light on her forehead, and he gave up.

“I checked his wallet on the dresser, and her purse,” Renz said. “He's Ben Swift. She's his wife, Beth.”

Quinn moved closer to the two dead bodies on the bed. The man's throat had been neatly sliced, both carotid arteries. There was a lot of blood around the bodies, but a towel had been laid over the man's throat to keep blood from spurting. The expression on his face was puzzled but peaceful.

Next to Ben Swift, Mrs. Swift looked horrified. There were minor cuts and cigarette burns all over her body. Her wrists were fastened with thick silver duct tape to her bare thighs. Quinn could see a residue of adhesive where tape had been over her mouth. She had screamed into the tape but wasn't heard except faintly by the killer.

Both victims had the letters
D.O.A.
neatly carved into their foreheads. Post mortem, so the carving didn't leave much of a mess.

Renz pointed to a head wound near Ben Swift's temple. “Looks like the killer took them both by surprise when they were asleep. Bashed the husband unconscious with a hard, blunt object, then gagged and taped the wife.”

“Then he sliced the husband's throat, to get him out of the way, and turned all his attention to the wife,” Quinn said.

“It was the woman he wanted,” Renz said.

“Probably.” Quinn agreed with Renz but didn't like jumping to conclusions at this point in the investigation.

He walked into the bathroom. There was blood on the plastic shower curtain and two of the white towels.

“It'll be his blood,” Renz said.

Quinn nodded. “He did the murders nude and then cleaned up in here. All we'll find are smudged rubber glove prints. He always washes most of the blood from the gloves, then peels them off so they're inside out and puts them in a pocket.”

“Sounds right,” Renz said. “Fits the pattern, anyway. I wonder if he watches too much television, thinks we might be able to get his fingerprints off the insides of the gloves.”

“You never know about the lab guys,” Quinn said, thinking about the killer years ago who always cut out his victims' eyes so his image wouldn't be fixed like a photo on their retinas. “And when we're dealing with somebody who'd do something like this, he might believe anything.”

There was shuffling around and voices coming from out in the hall. Quinn and Renz returned to the living room.

The first one in was the nasty little ME, Nift. He was followed by gloved up CSU techs and a detective Quinn knew slightly, who used to be on vice. Young guy on the make, Quinn figured, who might have something on Renz. He and Quinn exchanged nods.

“Where's Pearl?” Nift asked, making a show of looking around.

“Not here,” Quinn said. “She knew you were coming.”

“Tell her I missed her.”

“You been shooting at her?”

“Pearl and I just joke,” Nift said, seeming to realize suddenly that he didn't want to get Quinn mad. He motioned with his head toward the hall. “The bedroom?”

“The bedroom,” Renz said. “Make sure you don't touch anything but the bodies.”

“I always work that way,” Nift said. He brooded as if his feelings were hurt, but Quinn knew better. Any emotion showing on Nift's face was part of his act.

Nift hefted his big black leather bag and made his way with short, rapid steps toward the bedroom.

When he was gone, Renz said, “Necrophiliac little prick.”

“Probably,” Quinn said.