Mister X (19 page)

Pearl took a few steps inside the door and stopped to look around.

The offices of
City Beat
looked like the set of one of those 1930s movies wherein all the characters talked like machine guns. The small newspaper occupied the third floor of what appeared to be a mostly deserted redbrick office building in Lower Manhattan. There was an arrangement of battered green steel desks littered with papers. Journalists were seated at most of them, working away or swinging this way and that in their wooden swivel chairs to talk to—or yell at—colleagues. Above the turmoil, ceiling fans slowly rotated.

The entire hectic scene was palely lighted by fluorescent fixtures dangling on chains. Nobody was chewing on a cigar. No one had a pencil stuck behind his or her ear. And there were computers on the desks instead of bulky black typewriters. Other than that, Pearl felt as if she’d wandered into a production of
The Front Page.

Cindy Sellers, medium height with short brown hair, wearing a beige skirt and a white blouse with a man’s red tie, made her way between the desks and emerged from the sea of activity and chatter and shook hands with Pearl.

“We’re getting close to press time,” she said, by way of explaining all the frenzy.

“I appreciate you taking the time to see me,” Pearl said, as Sellers led her toward a small cubicle partitioned off with metal-framed frosted glass.

Sellers glanced back over her shoulder and smiled. “The pleasure’s mine. You might be the story.”

Pearl also smiled.
Stop the presses! Pearl says…

But she knew she wasn’t at the
New York Times.

“My office,” Sellers said when they were in the comparative privacy of the cramped cubicle. She plopped down behind her green steel desk and motioned for Pearl to take the only other place to sit, a hard wooden chair that looked as if it might have been manufactured by some religious sect that considered sitting a sin.

Pearl sat.

Sellers gave her a grin. “This is where I look at you and say ‘shoot.’ But I guess that’s a dangerous thing to say to a cop.”

“Some cops,” Pearl said.

“Fire away, Detective.”

“I’m wondering if
you’re
the story,” Pearl said.

“How so?”

“The shadow woman.”

Sellers acted surprised, then emitted what might be described as a guffaw.

Yes
, Pearl thought,
a guffaw
.

“You’re way off track,” Sellers said, “but I can see how you got there. And I’m not going to tell you where I get my information.”

“I can imagine,” Pearl said. “We have loose lips all over the place.”

“I’m having such a good time, not to mention a good payday, writing about the mysterious shadow woman that you think I manufactured her. I don’t do that kind of thing, Pearl, I’m a journalist. A professional.” Sellers waved a hand as if trying to flick something sticky off her fingertips. “All that mishmash in the outer office might look like confusion and something lightweight, but we all take it seriously. Call us naïve and altruistic, but we have ethics.”

“Such bullshit,” Pearl said.

Sellers grinned. “Okay, I was lying. Half lying, anyway. What we’re most interested in is a story, and if I’d thought of inventing or becoming a mysterious shadow woman, I might have. But I didn’t.” She made a big show of crossing her nonexistent heart with the tip of her forefinger. “Honest.”

“You didn’t stick a needle in your eye,” Pearl said.

“If I had a needle…” Sellers rolled her chair back a little so she had room to cross her legs and swivel slightly this way and that. “What made you think if you came here and asked me I might tell you the truth?”

“I believe in the direct approach.”

“Me, too. How you getting along with your new profiler?”

“Addie seems okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Now you’re trying to manufacture a story.”

“What I told you about my profession, it wasn’t all bullshit, Pearl. I think you know that. You and I are in kind of the same business—we dig, and we know how to dig. We find out things.”

Pearl decided to take the bait. “What have you found out about Addie Price?”

“Probably nothing you don’t know. She was attacked in Detroit and would have been killed, but her assailant broke off the attempt and fled.”

Pearl sat silently.

“Our girl made the most of things, turned her brush with death into opportunity. She earned degrees in criminology and psychology and made contacts in the local media. Became a minor celebrity, blabbing about her theories on radio and TV whenever a serious crime was committed. Beyond that, I don’t know much else about her.”

“You’ve got it pretty much covered,” Pearl said.

“Anything you want to contribute?”

“Nothing that I could. What is it about Addie that interests you?”

“I’m not sure. Just a feeling that something about her isn’t right. Do you have the same feeling?”

“No,” Pearl lied.

“I deal in favors made and repaid,” Sellers said. “That’s why I took time out of my busy day to talk with you. Why I just told you what I know about Adelaide Price. And I think I put your mind at rest about your theory of me being the shadow woman. All I want in return is for you to tell me whatever else you find out about Addie Price.”

“Whatever’s connected to the investigation and newsworthy, you mean?”

Sellers shrugged. “Oh, sure. I’m not interested in her personal life.”

Both women laughed.

Then Sellers said, surprising Pearl, “You and Quinn aren’t completely over.”

“Maybe not as far as he’s concerned,” Pearl said. “But yes, we’re over.”

Sellers winked. “Because of Yancy Taggart?”

Pearl felt the rush of blood to her face and knew Sellers would enjoy having made her blush. “How do you know about Yancy?”

“I told you, it’s my business to find out things. Yancy’s getting it on with one of the investigating officers, so he might become part of the story.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Well, Yancy’s got a way of becoming a big part of whatever he gets involved in. You’d be surprised at his connections, with his lobbying for those crackpots who want windmills on skyscrapers.”

“They aren’t crackpots, and it’s not windmills. They’re wind turbines, and it makes more sense than it seems to when you first hear it.”

Sellers grinned silently at her.

“Well, maybe not,” Pearl said.

“What I know about Yancy is he’s damned convincing. He can make those wind turbines seem like good sense, at least long enough to pry money from wealthy donors. If he was still a tobacco industry lobbyist, everybody’d still be smoking.”

Pearl deadpanned it and said nothing. For all she knew, Sellers was trying to confirm things she didn’t know for sure. Or maybe she had some other motive.

“Guys like Yancy can be exciting,” Sellers went on. “Full of charm and schmaltz. Oh, sometimes they have other sides you wouldn’t expect, redeeming facets to their personalities. But then so does everyone else. Hell, you wouldn’t believe it, but sometimes I have a kind heart.”

Pearl gave her a level look. “Are you trying to get me deeper in your debt by warning me about Yancy?”

“Warning? No, that’d be too strong a word. I would say, though, a man like that, who’s been around and plays around, you need to be careful.” Sellers stood up, indicating that they’d talked long enough and she had to get back to newspaper biz. “But you’re a cop. You’ve been around, yourself, and you understand people. You sure don’t have to be warned. But it wouldn’t hurt if somebody who sometimes knows more than you do was kind of looking out for you.”

Pearl knew the game. Sellers was offering to feed her information about Yancy in return for whatever information Pearl might give her about the investigation. Or about Addie Price. After all, both women dealt in information.

For the first time since entering the modest, stifling cubicle, Pearl wondered if this conversation was being recorded. Sellers was the type who probably recorded everything. And used it whatever the consequences.
Well, the hell with it
, Pearl thought. She was sure she hadn’t said anything incriminating or even out of line, and she didn’t intend to.

Pearl stood up. “Thanks, but I can pretty much look after myself.”

“I would agree with that,” Sellers said. “And I hope we’ve cleared up that shadow woman thing.”

“Sure,” Pearl said.

Sellers walked her out through the maze of green desks, swivel chairs, and maelstrom of activity, staying slightly ahead of her in the manner of a guide escorting someone through a dangerous jungle.

Lies, lies, lies
, Pearl thought, all the way back down to the street and the jungle outside.

After leaving the offices of
City Beat
Pearl used the unmarked she was driving to swing by her apartment. Her conversation with Cindy Sellers had upset her more than she wanted to admit.

Once inside the apartment, she decided simply to eat an early lunch there and then do some work on her laptop at the kitchen table. There was no need for Quinn to know her exact whereabouts. If he wanted her, he could contact her on her cell phone.

When her shoes were removed and the air conditioner had cooled and dehumidified the kitchen, she settled down at the table with a container of sharp cheddar cheese, some crackers, a cold can of Diet Coke, and her notebook computer.

Since Cindy Sellers revealed that she’d probed into Yancy’s affairs, and Cindy was the fourth estate’s dubious representative, Yancy was part of the investigation. Therefore Pearl was working on the investigation. Right there at her kitchen table, cheese and crackers and all.

She smiled, knowing Quinn wouldn’t buy that line of reasoning.

That was okay; she didn’t plan on having to sell it to him.

She snacked with one hand and worked the computer with the other, following links from relevance to remoteness and learning everything possible online about Yancy Taggart, registered lobbyist. She was driven by a desire to dig deeper, to know everything Cindy Sellers knew and more.

So at one time Yancy had lobbied for the tobacco industry. Well, so what? He’d probably believed in the merits of smoking the same way he believed in wind-powered skyscrapers.

Pearl followed obscure links and visited sites she hadn’t seen before.

Yancy seemed to have been honest and forthcoming. He’d told her about the tobacco industry job, and a lot of other things that she confirmed. He did hold a degree in communications and had put it and his ebullient personality and deviousness to good use. Pearl could find nothing to suggest that he was or had been married, or that he’d fathered any children.

There was a photograph of him posing with half a dozen successful business types in suits, and with correspondingly beautiful women, at some sort of convention two years ago in Miami. His arm was about the waist of a gorgeous blond woman with a dress that looked already ripped half off. The men were identified in the photo but not the women.

Humph,
Pearl thought.

She fed the other five men’s names into Google and worked for another two hours. Three of the men were fellow lobbyists, one was in insurance, and the other was mayor of a small town in Texas. All innocuous enough.

Yancy seemed never to have crossed swords with the law in any serious manner.

Pearl drained the last of the warm Coke and shut down her computer. Then she closed the laptop’s lid, sat back, and smiled as she thought about Yancy.

Passed!

Realizing she was still hungry, she ate another cracker.

What was that? Music?

She listened more closely, fitting the faint notes together. The theme from
Dragnet
. Coming from her cell phone in her purse, where she’d left it on the arm of the sofa in the living room.

Pearl got up from the table and dashed out of the kitchen. She made a beeline for the phone and snatched it up, flipped it open, and pressed
TALK
all in the same motion.

“Where are you Pearl?” Quinn asked.

“Climbing into the unmarked, on the way to the office,” Pearl said.
Lies, lies, lies.

“You have another destination. We’ve got another Carver victim.”

One last cracker and Pearl was on her way.

Traffic on Broadway slowed Pearl, but she cut over to Second Avenue, imperiled the lives of a few pedestrians, and reached Lower Manhattan in good time.

The address Quinn had given her was an old brick building with a red granite facade. There was the usual assortment of unmarked and radio cars pulled in at odd angles to the curb in front of the building, along with an ambulance. Two paramedics sat inside the ambulance with the engine running to keep the air-conditioning going. The vehicles’ emergency lights were still flashing, along with the roof bar lights of one of the radio cars.

Three uniforms were standing at the wide concrete steps leading to the entrance, two with their feet propped on the first step. Pearl flashed her shield and one of them, a young guy with a nose like de Bergerac’s, told her the floor and apartment numbers.

The victim’s apartment was close enough to the elevator that as soon as Pearl stepped out of it she was there. Fedderman and Harold Mishkin were standing in the hall outside the open apartment door. Fedderman acknowledged Pearl with a nod. Mishkin smiled wanly at her. He had the mentholated goo he used at murder scenes rubbed into his mustache beneath his nose. It was almost enough to make her eyes water.

“Quinn and Sal are inside,” Mishkin said.

So were the techs from the CSU, dusting and plucking, picking and bagging. The ballet of the white gloves. Careful where she stepped and what she touched, Pearl made her way through the apartment living room and down the hall, glancing in the bathroom to make sure that wasn’t where the body was.

Quinn and Sal Vitali were in the bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed and watching Nift, the repugnant little M.E., examining the victim. The smells of blood, feces, and the beginnings of decay were strong. Pearl understood why Mishkin had used his mentholated cream.

The victim was lying on her back nude, blood on her chest and caked black beneath her on the sheets. Her throat had been sliced almost ear to ear. Even through the blood, it was obvious that her nipples had been removed and a large
X
was carved on her body so that the intersection of its straight lines was between her breasts. The breasts themselves were undamaged by the
X.

Pearl wondered what the bloody
X
could mean.
X
marks the spot? The victim has been canceled? Or was it an initial?
Xavier
?

It might be none or all those things.

Probably they would never know until they had the killer.

“Meet Joyce House,” Sal said in his deep, gravel voice. “She was a waitress at a place called the Nickel Diner. Thirty-two years old, unmarried, lived alone.”

The victim was the Carver’s type. Between twenty and forty, brown hair, attractive. Her brown eyes were fixed as a doll’s eyes. They were widened in horror though she was grinning. Her throat was grinning, anyway, where it had been slashed. Her mouth—

“What’s that in her mouth?” Pearl asked.

“A gag,” Nift said, without looking up at Pearl. Then he did look up and grin, nothing like the victim’s ghastly grin but in its way almost as ugly. “Her wadded-up panties.”

Pearl looked over at Quinn and Sal. The Carver had used his victims’ wadded panties to silence them.

“Look over on the dresser,” Nift said.

They did, and saw a simple house of cards. Quinn went over and looked closely at it. The card house was made of face cards, all of them turned out so the fragile structure was colorful. The rest of the deck was stacked neatly next to it, a popular brand of playing card that would be impossible to trace. Quinn knew it was a given that there would be no fingerprints on the cards.

“Get it?” Nift asked. “House of cards…Joyce House…another gag, like the one in her mouth.”

“I’d like to stuff something in your mouth,” Pearl said.

“I’m always available,” Nift said, laughing.

“He’s returned to form,” Quinn said.

“He was always a jerk-off,” Pearl said.

“I meant the Carver, with the panties gag,” Quinn said. “Stay on point, Pearl.”

Sal said, “He was rusty with the Sanders woman.”

“He’s getting back in the groove,” Nift said, tapping the slashed throat with a pointed silver instrument.

Pearl instinctively winced.
Don’t hurt her!

“His taste is improving, too,” Nift said. “This one was a honey when she was alive. Look at that set on her. She was built like you, Pearl.”

“How would you like to be dead like her?” Pearl said.

Nift smiled.

“What about those bruises on her arms?” Quinn asked.

“Something pressed down hard there, pinning her to the mattress,” Nift said. “Probably the killer’s knees. My guess is he straddled her and placed her arms like that so she couldn’t interfere with what he was doing to her.”

“You mean that happened while she was alive?” Sal asked.

Nift looked at Pearl when he answered. “Oh, yeah, she felt everything. He probably took his time with her. She must’ve been scared shitless.” He nodded toward the victim’s lower body and the stain where her bowels had released after death. “In fact—”

“Shut your goddamned mouth!” Pearl said.

Quinn looked over at Pearl and then stared hard at Nift.

“I would do that,” Quinn said.

Nift shrugged and continued his work on the body. He was obviously amused at having made Pearl lose her cool.

“Got an approximate time of death?” Vitali asked, keeping his voice calm and trying to put a damper on everyone’s emotions. Keep the focus of the conversation on business. He knew about Pearl. Unstable dynamite.

“She’s been dead at least twelve hours,” Nift said. “So she’s slightly ripe. That’s why your partner Mishkin isn’t in here.”

“Only one of us needs to be here,” Sal said.

“I can get closer on the time of death after I get her to the morgue,” Nift said. He’d seemed to have caught something in Sal’s voice that suggested he’d better back off. “It won’t be long. There’s a rush on this one, and I’m squeezing her into my busy schedule.”

“Who found her?” Pearl asked.

“Neighbors complained about the smell coming from the apartment, through the vents,” Sal said. “The super let himself in, then saw her and let himself out in a hurry. Harold went downstairs and got his statement.”

“Any signs of rape?” Quinn asked.

“No signs of penetration, but this might have started out as rough sex and got out of control.” Nift straightened up, gave his nasty little grin, and touched his crotch. “One thing’s for sure: this one got it rougher than she wanted.”

Pearl took a step toward the bed where Nift was again bending over the victim. Quinn extended an arm, and she stopped, knowing he wouldn’t let her get any closer to Nift. He’d grab and restrain her. She didn’t want Quinn’s hands on her. Right now, not any man’s hands. She wanted her hands on Nift.

“Haven’t seen her nipples anywhere,” Nift said. “Our guy took his usual souvenirs. He’s building quite a collection.”

Nift straightened back up and stepped away from the bed. He dropped the steel instrument he’d been probing with into a container with the others that he’d used and then peeled off his latex gloves. “I’m finished playing with the young lady until the postmortem. You can have her removed anytime you want. Do what you will with her.” He stuffed the inside-out gloves into the container with the instruments and closed it. “Just remember her last date’s with me.”

“Necrophiliac prick,” Pearl said.

Nift seemed unperturbed. “Well, I enjoy my work.” He smiled at Pearl. “You might enjoy my work, too.”

Pearl made a move toward Nift, but there was Quinn’s big arm, like a barrier at a railroad crossing.

Pearl stopped and took a deep breath. She pushed at the arm, but it didn’t give. That was okay. By now she didn’t want to move it.

“Try your line of bullshit on a live woman and see what happens,” Pearl said from where she was safe behind Quinn’s arm. Safe not from Nift, but from doing something to him she’d regret.

Nift finished gathering up what he needed and picked up his black medical bag. “My perverse charm works on the live ones, too,” he said to Pearl. “It’s all in knowing how to get under their skin. Once their emotions are aroused, who knows what else they might want to feel?”

He winked at her as he went out the door.

Quinn and Sal looked at each other. Might Nift be right in his cynical approach to women? Arousing their ire to kick-start their other emotions. Getting their engines started, so to speak.

“Asshole!” Pearl said under her breath.

Apparently the technique didn’t work with Pearl.

“It’s his game,” Quinn said. “He wants to get a rise out of you, Pearl. You shouldn’t play along.”

“If you just did your job and ignored his bullshit, it’d be easier for you,” Sal said.

“You saying I don’t do my job?”

Sal raised both hands. “No, no…”

“Nift is a born shit disturber,” Pearl said.

“Okay,” Quinn said. “We all agree on that, along with everybody who ever met Nift. Let’s calm down and remember where we are.”

Where they were was in a room with the dead.

The three detectives took a long last look around. Nobody’s gaze lingered on Joyce House.

The techs had finished with the body and almost with this room, leaving only slight evidence that they’d been there. They still had to disassemble and dust the house of cards, but no one doubted they’d find only glove smudges.

“Time to talk in-depth with the neighbors,” Sal said. “Nift wants to do a rush job. Should I give word the body can be removed?”

“Not yet,” Quinn said. “Conference in the hall first about who talks to which tenants.”

“The lady can keep Nift waiting,” Pearl said.

The two men smiled.

Not Pearl.