Mister X (3 page)

“You’re tearing open old wounds,” Rhonda Nathan’s mother said.

Pearl thought the elderly woman might begin to cry, but the unblinking gray eyes remained calm behind what looked like cheap drugstore eyeglasses.

The Nathans hadn’t been difficult to trace, but the effort had been time-consuming. When their twenty-five-year-old daughter, Rhonda, had been killed by the Carver seven years ago, they’d lived in a spacious condo in the East Fifties. Rhonda’s father, who’d been struck and killed by a bus three years ago, had been the family breadwinner with a partnership in a Wall Street firm. His widow, Edith Nathan, had fallen a long way to this cramped apartment on the Lower East Side.

Pearl did feel sorry for the woman. Her thinning gray hair was unkempt, her complexion sallow. The flesh beneath her chin dangled in wattles, and her figure, if she’d ever had one, had become plump in a way that reminded Pearl of infants still in the crib. Breasts seemed nonexistent beneath her stained blue robe with its mismatched white sash.

The woman’s eyes were fixed straight ahead. Her soul seemed to have wandered.

“Edith?” Pearl said softly.

The unnaturally calm gray eyes trained themselves on Pearl.

“We don’t mean to cause pain,” Pearl said.

“But you do cause pain,” Edith said. “Like a scab being ripped from a wounded heart that will never completely heal.”

Pearl glanced around the humble apartment. Geraniums in plastic pots on a windowsill were obviously dead, as were roses in a cracked vase on top of the television. Live flowers in another pot in the middle of the kitchen table, barely visible to Pearl, saved the apartment’s plant life from being a sad metaphor. On a shelf that ran along a wall near a cabinet full of glass curios, a color photograph of a young dark-haired woman with a bright smile was propped in a silver frame. Pearl recognized Rhonda Nathan from her photos in the newspaper clippings of seven years ago that had been delivered by Chrissie Keller.

“Like most of the families of the monster’s victims,” Edith said, “I long ago accepted the reality that my daughter and only child was gone from the world. Nothing will bring her back. Not fate or a prayer or a deal with God or the devil. Not you reopening the investigation. Would I trade my life for the monster’s death? Yes. Would I gladly kill him slowly in the most dreadful way? Yes. But not in the heat of vengeance. More in the balancing of scales.” Edith sighed and leaned back into the flowered sofa cushions. “There is a numbness in me, Detective Kasner. Has been for years. Not a depression. A numbness because something is missing.”

Edith hadn’t looked closely at Pearl’s ID when Pearl had identified herself as a detective. It wasn’t ethical for Pearl to let the woman go on assuming she was with the NYPD, but Pearl was afraid the interview might not be granted otherwise.

Seven years ago in June, Rhonda Nathan had worked late at the advertising agency where she wrote copy, alone in her office cubicle. Her body had been found there by the office cleaning service just before daylight the next morning. She was slouched dead in her desk chair, nude, her nipples removed, the grotesque and bloody
X
carved deeply into her torso beneath her breasts. Her panties had been removed and knotted into a gag, stuffed deeply in her mouth in such a way that leftover material allowed for a leg hole to be looped around her neck and knotted to hold the gag firm. It was a method that had to be the result of planning and practice. A pencil had been placed between the victim’s fingers, doubtless after death, as if she’d been taking notes throughout her torture and demise. A small thing, but it carried a jolting incongruity. It was one of several examples of a gruesome sense of humor that the Carver sometimes exhibited to the police at his crime scenes. A taunter, was the Carver. Not unusual in a serial killer who assumed he was much brighter than his pursuers.

Pearl decided not to go into the details of Rhonda’s murder.

“In the intervening years since…it happened,” she said, “have any new thoughts come to you, any recollections that might be of help? Even those that you might not think important?”

“Such as?” Edith asked softly.

“Anything that became clearer to you, or that you remembered about the week or so before the tragedy.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing. And I think about that time every night, and sometimes I dream.”

“Do you recall your daughter acting strangely—or simply out of character—in the time leading up to her death? Is there someone you can think of who could have had some disagreement with her? Someone who might have had a motive?”

“Motive?” Edith seemed mystified and slightly angry. “My daughter was a girl well liked. I would say
very
well liked. Rhonda was slain by a deranged monster, Detective Kasner. It’s as simple and horrible as that.”

“I think you’re right,” Pearl said, “but the monster doesn’t necessarily seem like one when he’s not being…himself. It’s possible you knew him at the time, or at least had met him.”

“Rhonda had recently broken up with her boyfriend, Charles Correnwell. It would be difficult to see Charles as a killer. Anyway, he moved to live with his mother in California weeks before Rhonda was killed, and has an alibi.”

Pearl knew that to be true. Charles Correnwell, on the other side of a continent, had attended a college lecture and was later drinking with friends at the approximate time of Rhonda’s murder.

“Your husband…” Pearl began.

Edith stared at her sharply. “He’s dead.”

“I know, ma’am. I know the circumstances.”

“We were both shattered by the loss of our daughter,” Edith said, “but I’m sure Aaron’s death was an accident. He wouldn’t leave me, leave the world, that way.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Pearl said. “I was wondering if there might have been someone with an irrational motive to get at your husband by murdering his daughter.”

“I’m sure there was no one that sick among our social or business acquaintances.”

Pearl said nothing, and she and Edith exchanged glances. They’d established that monsters didn’t always seem like monsters.

“Someone with protective coloring, you mean?” Edith said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Edith shrugged beneath the blue robe. “I’d have no way of knowing, would I?”

“Not unless a way came to you. Sometime when you were doing something else, or just before falling asleep, or waking up. The human mind works that way, catches us by surprise.”

“I’ve fallen asleep and awakened thinking about Rhonda almost every night and morning since she died,” Edith said. “The horror always plays out the same way, and I always wish I could have done something—anything—to prevent it. That’s the worst thing about the past, that it can’t be changed.”

Pearl felt stymied for a moment. “Mrs. Nathan—Edith. There’s so much about a person that never makes it into a police report.” She leaned forward. “What was your daughter’s favorite food? Did she smoke? What sort of music did she listen to? Might she have met someone online? Did she have a lot of male friends? Did she like movies?”

Edith sat more rigidly and stared hard at her, then seemed to relax. “She liked junk food—hamburgers, French fries, anything greasy and bad for her health. She didn’t smoke. Drank some, but not much. Music? She liked to listen to that little girl from Brooklyn.”

“Cyndi Lauper?”

Edith seemed to brighten. “That’s the one.”

“So happens I’m also a fan,” Pearl said.

“Rhonda used her computer, the Internet, but she didn’t go to chat rooms or that sort of thing. She had mostly female friends but some boys. They’d talk a lot on their cell phones. She had her cell phone pressed to her ear too much, like they all do, like it was growing there. I told her she might get brain cancer, but she didn’t listen.”

“None of them do,” Pearl said.

Neither woman said anything. Neither wanted to hear that it hadn’t mattered whether Rhonda’s cell phone would have given her cancer.

“These don’t sound like the kind of questions that solve murder cases,” Edith said.

“Oh, but they are,” Pearl told her. “Almost always it’s something that didn’t seem important at the time that turns out to be the key.”

“Rhonda had just gotten her degree in psychology and was spending most of her time waiting tables at Sporter’s, the restaurant in the next block, while she was looking for a better job. She didn’t have a lot of spare time.” Edith rubbed her palms on her temples, her fingers rigid. She looked exhausted. “I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s where she met the monster, at the restaurant.”

“It’s possible.”

“The police looked into it and found nothing.”

“That doesn’t mean there was nothing,” Pearl said.

Seeing that Edith was almost too tired to remain awake, Pearl stood up and thanked her for her time.

“Do you really think there’s a chance, after all these years?” Edith asked. Her eyes were bloodshot, swollen, and without hope.

“A chance,” Pearl said. “A slight chance.”

“I saw when you showed me your identification that you weren’t a real detective,” Edith said. “I mean, with the police.”

Pearl smiled. “I’m a real detective.”

“Private,” Edith said. “Who hired you? Who’s paying for this?”

“Twin sister of one of the Carver victims,” Pearl said.

Edith flinched slightly, as if assailed by a bright and sudden light. “Twins…my God, how she must have suffered.” She stared directly at Pearl. “She’s still suffering, isn’t she?”

“She is.” Pearl reached into a pocket, drew out one of her cards, and handed it to Edith. “If you do think of something…”

Edith accepted the card and studied it. “Quinn and Associates. Is that Captain Frank Quinn?”

“It is,” Pearl said. “You know him?”

“By reputation. I’m glad he’s one of the people looking for Rhonda’s killer.”

Pearl was reminded, as she often was, of Quinn’s high standing with the public because of his success in apprehending serial killers. He was halfway famous.

What next?
Pearl thought.
A book contract?

“I’ll call you,” Edith said.

Her voice brought Pearl back from her thoughts.

“If I think of something,” Edith reminded her.

“Yes,” Pearl said. “Please. Anything, however trivial. It might make all the difference.”

“Reopening the investigation can’t be cheap,” Edith said. “The surviving twin, is she rich?”

“Not usually,” Pearl said, “but she recently came into some money.”

“She must feel she has to do this.”

“She feels that way right now,” Pearl said.

“She won’t change her mind,” Edith said.

“Her check will clear,” Quinn said. “I called her bank to make sure there were sufficient funds.”

They were in the office, wondering why they couldn’t get in touch with Chrissie Keller at either of the phone numbers she’d given them. A message machine answered at one number, but the messages didn’t seem to get through. The other number was to a cell phone and elicited nothing but a high-pitched squeal.

“What about the check for the Sammy’s job?” Pearl asked.

“It’s good, too. I made sure.”

“We’re rich,” Fedderman said.

“Solvent,” Quinn said.

“So why can’t we get in touch with Chrissie?” Pearl asked.

“Maybe she’s one of those clients who figures she’ll be the one to decide when we report,” Fedderman said.

“Control freak,” Pearl said.

“I hate those,” Quinn said.

Pot, kettle
, Pearl thought, and congratulated herself for staying quiet.

“If she doesn’t contact us in a day or two, we can start to wonder,” Quinn said. “Until then, we stay on the case. More interviews with victims’ friends and family.” He glanced from Pearl to Fedderman. “You two have any luck?”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” Pearl said.

Even as she spoke, she realized there was something about the case that she hadn’t yet noticed. It played like a bashful shadow just beyond the borders of her consciousness.

Pearl and Fedderman handed Quinn copies of their interview notes for the files, then in matter-of-fact tones told him about their reinterviewing of people close to the Carver victims. Other than the usual contradictions that could be put down to the passage of time and erosion of memory, there didn’t seem to be many discernable differences between these interviews and those done years ago. Nothing that might be construed as a lead.

Quinn considered lighting a cigar but didn’t. Pearl would raise hell. She hated it when he or anyone else smoked in the office.

He thought about Chrissie Keller, the way she’d come into the office. Something about her. He was getting a bad feeling about what they’d gotten into, where it might be heading. A deep sensation in his stomach that was seldom off the mark.

“Some of the friends and family didn’t like being taken back to that time,” Fedderman said. “You could see it in their faces, and it made your heart sad.”

“That’s what these assholes start,” Quinn said. “It goes on for years. Sometimes for generations.”

“There’s still a lot of breakage there,” Pearl said. “A lot of hatred.” But that was what she’d expected to find. She knew Quinn was right: Untimely, violent death resonated for decades.

“Let’s check these statements in detail with the earlier ones,” Quinn said. “Then we can do some more reinterviewing.”

“Revive some more pain,” Fedderman said sadly.

“Blame the aforementioned asshole,” Quinn said.

It was when Pearl was integrating the new statements into the files that she realized what had been nagging at the edges of her mind. She reached for her folder containing the copies of the newspaper clippings that had been left by Chrissie Keller.

She leafed through the clippings and stopped at those concerning Chrissie’s twin, Tiffany.

Pearl was right in what had occurred to her. She felt the flush of satisfaction that was what she loved most about this work.

“There are photos of all the victims until we get to victim number five, the Carver’s last victim,” she said. “Tiffany Keller. Lots of clippings, but none with a photograph.”

Quinn and Fedderman checked their own copies.

No photos of Tiffany.

“Coincidence?” Fedderman asked. Thinking,
Yeah, sure
. Like most cops, he wasn’t much of a believer in coincidence.

“It doesn’t seem likely that Tiffany’s murder would generate all those news items without a photo,” Pearl said.

Quinn did his backward tilt in his desk chair and went into his casual balancing act, damn near tipping. “A young, attractive victim, sexually mutilated. There’d be plenty of photographs.”

He watched Pearl go at it, like a hound on the scent, though she wouldn’t like the comparison. She already had her computer booted up and was online, feeding Tiffany Keller’s name into her browser.

It took only a few moments to search the New York papers’ archives for related items.

Unsurprisingly, Tiffany’s mutilation and death at the hands of the Carver had been a major news story. And as Quinn had thought, the gory details of the crime were accompanied by plenty of vivid photographs of the young, attractive victim.

“I’ll be damned,” Pearl said.

“Photos?” Quinn asked.

“Lots of them.”

“Chrissie must have culled out the news clippings accompanied by photos,” Fedderman said.

Pearl shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.”

Quinn and Fedderman moved closer so they could see her computer’s monitor without glare.

Quinn felt the sensation in his stomach gain in intensity.

The screen showed what looked like a high school yearbook photo of a pretty, dark-haired girl with a broad grin and slightly uptilted brown eyes that suggested potential mischief. It was a potential never realized in a life cut short by the Carver.

The caption beneath the photo was simply the subject’s name:
Tiffany Keller
.

Tiffany looked nothing like her twin who had hired Quinn and Associates to find her killer.