Mister X (32 page)

Quinn sat in Renz’s office and watched sunlight angle in through the blinds and cast slices of brilliance swarming with dust motes. The office was warm, crowded as it was and with the invasion of the sun. Renz, seated behind his desk and wearing navy blue suspenders and a white shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up, appeared cool. There was in the air the faintest scent of cigar smoke, as there was the whiff of political corruption.

Quinn had suggested the meeting, but Renz was pretending he’d summoned him. Quinn knew it was some kind of ruse to maintain dominance. Renz was full of such minor stratagems to help him become or remain top dog. Quinn used to enjoy deflating Renz, but he’d become bored with that and usually let the dog have his day.

“This investigation is turning into a disaster,” Renz said. “The media wolves are all over it and all over me. The mayor’s office calls half a dozen times a day.” He leaned forward over his desk and glared at Quinn, who was seated in one of the chairs facing the desk. “What the bejesus is going on?”

“Progress,” Quinn said.

“Do illuminate me.”

Quinn told him about Lisa Bolt’s recovery and what she’d said yesterday at the hospital.

“And we still don’t know where the real Chrissie Keller is?” Renz asked.

“Not yet,” Quinn said.

“Then the only actual progress I see is you found the woman who conned you into thinking she was Chrissie. And you needed a careless cab driver to do that.”

“Not quite.”

He told Renz about Tiffany Keller’s childhood molestation by her father, and about Chrissie’s guilt over doing nothing to stop it. Watching Renz’s flabby features, Quinn was glad he’d decided to present this information to the Machiavellian police commissioner face-to-face. It opened up all sorts of possibilities.

Renz sat running a fingernail over his close-shaven, over-flowing jowls. Anyone listening closely could hear the sound of the nail scraping minute gray stubble.

At last he said, “You proposing using the father as bait?”

Renz hadn’t quite proposed the idea himself, which was what Quinn had wanted. But this should be close enough.

“Addie gave me the idea,” Quinn said. Since Renz had assigned Addie to the case, he had to at least pretend to give serious consideration to a strategy based on her theory.

“What’s the wife, Erin, say about this?” Renz asked.

“Nothing yet. She doesn’t know we’re considering it.”

“Does she know her prick husband molested their daughters?”

“Probably. That’s usually the case.”

“She’d go along with using him as bait, then. Might even be enthusiastic.”

“Might be ecstatic.”

“Where’s hubby now?”

“We haven’t tried to locate him yet. I wanted your opinion first.”

“Tell me more.”

“We could leak it to the press that he’s in town, leak where he’s staying. If Chrissie really did commit any of these murders, making it look like the Carver’s back in action, she might go after old dad. She’s already got blood on her hands, and she
is
out to avenge her sister’s death. Why not also avenge her sister’s molestation? Assuage at least some of that guilt she’s suffering for keeping quiet about what was going on?”

“Might work,” Renz said. “But if we try it and fail, I’ll be chewed up like dog food by the media. You understand that politically this will be a risk?”

“Sure. But it might be a bigger risk not to act and make something happen.”

“There’ll be no way to keep it out of the media.”

“No,” Quinn said. “But that’s okay. At least some of it has to be public knowledge for it to work.”

“Do you even know where Dad is?”

“He should be easy to find.”

“Hah! If you do find him, how will you make him go along with being bait?”

“I don’t know yet. We might ask the twins’ mother.”

“Maybe you could hold a child molestation charge over Dad’s head, so he cooperates or does prison time.”

“The statute of limitation’s expired,” Quinn said. “He couldn’t be prosecuted even if there was enough evidence.”

“
He
might not know that.”

Quinn stood up. “So I’ve got the okay to do this?” He wanted no mistake about Renz’s involvement. He and Renz would own this decision, and suffer their respective consequences if it failed.

“Do it,” Renz said, also standing. “It’s better than what we’ve been doing, which seems mostly to be going around finding fresh victims.”

Quinn nodded and moved toward the door.

“How are Vitali and Mishkin working out?” Renz asked behind him.

Quinn stopped and looked back. “They’re good cops.”

“And Addie Price? How’s she working out?”

“She’s the reason I’m here,” Quinn said.

Renz grinned. “I can pick ’em. Right?”

Quinn said, “That’s the reason you’re here.”

He went out the door, wondering if the twins’ father was still alive and could be found.

“He lives in Detroit and uses the name Edward Archer,” Erin said. She elevated her chin slightly. “We have very little contact.”

Quinn and Fedderman were in the office, along with Helen Iman, the NYPD profiler and psychologist Renz had insisted sit in for Addie, who was with Renz today, helping him prepare for his regular briefing of the press. She was becoming something of a media consultant to him. Helen was a lanky six feet tall with choppy red hair and looked like a natural basketball center. She was also the best at this kind of thing, and the only profiler Quinn trusted.

Erin was seated in a chair angled toward Quinn’s desk. Her long auburn hair was neatly combed, and she was wearing a light beige pantsuit, tan high heels, and a dainty silver and pearl necklace inside the V-neck of her white blouse. She was a compact package next to Helen. Quinn could detect the subtle scent of her perfume. It made him think of the flowers Pearl had taken to Lisa Bolt.

“But you do know how to contact him?” he said.

“Not directly,” Erin said. “I’d have to make a few phone calls.” She smiled in that secretive way of hers, as if she was a move ahead of him. “But why should I? He has no interest in either me or Chrissie now. I haven’t seen him since Christmas three years ago, when he dropped by unexpectedly. I think he’d been drinking.”

“What does your husband do in Detroit?” Quinn asked.

She crossed her legs so her calves were close together. “
Former
husband. He’s in the insurance business, has his own agency. Doing quite well. I was told that he has political ambitions.”

“Political?” Quinn sensed a vulnerability.

“He wants to run for city council or some such thing. Maybe alderman. Whatever they have in Detroit.” She absently fished about in her matching tan purse and then stopped and looked around. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes,” Pearl said, from where she sat behind her desk.

Erin shrugged and snapped the purse closed. “Why are you asking me about Ed?”

Quinn told her what they had in mind, touching on the regular molestation of Tiffany, witnessed by Chrissie. Not asking if Erin had known about it.

But the question remained in the air, unasked.

Erin reached again for her purse, opened it, and snapped it shut. She sat thinking, neither confirming nor denying that she’d been aware of the molestations and beatings that had dominated her children’s young lives. The truth was a beast better kept caged.

She addressed Quinn calmly. “You want Ed to come to New York and let you make it known that he’s here.”

“Yes. Under his real name: Keller.”

Erin crossed her legs even tighter. “To avoid unfavorable publicity, he might agree to do that. He’s an ambitious bastard. But I can’t believe Chrissie—”

“I know,” Quinn said. “But you must consider that you’re the poor girl’s mother. And she’s not been thinking straight. Our psychologist”—he nodded toward Helen, all strung-out six feet of her leaning casually on a wall—“believes that if she knows he’s in town, Chrissie might break cover and go after her father.”

“You mean try to kill him.”

“Perhaps. Though that might be putting it too dramatically. She might at least want to see him and have it out with him.”

“At which point the police will step out from behind the curtains and Chrissie will be arrested.”

“Melodrama again. But yes. I’m being honest with you. Your daughter is a murder suspect. That’s not to say she’s guilty.”

“But you think she is.”

“Not necessarily. What I think is that we can’t find her, and nothing else seems to be working. You
do
want her found?”

“Of course I do. Found and not hurt.”

“That would be our objective. I promise you that none of us wants to see the slightest harm come to Chrissie.”

“And you want me to talk Ed into this.”

“If that’s what it takes, yes.”

Erin rearranged her legs and stood up. “I need to think about this.”

“Of course.” Quinn stood also. “But can you let us know as soon as possible?”

“I’ll do that,” Erin said.

She glanced around at everyone, gave a tentative nod, and left the office.

“Best follow her,” Quinn said to Fedderman.

Fedderman snatched up his suit coat and shrugged into it. Buttoning his shirt cuff on the run, he hurried from the office.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Pearl said, “Do you think she’ll go for it?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Quinn said. He looked over at Helen.

“You handled her very well,” Helen said, pushing away from the wall. “Odds are she’ll do what you asked. One way or the other, she does want her daughter found.”

“We don’t need her to do this,” Pearl said. “Now that we know Edward Keller is Edward Archer, he should be easy enough to find. We can make him cooperate.”

“Erin can be far more persuasive,” Helen said. “We need her to pull him back into the past and pressure him into cooperating. He knows she can blow his cover any time, make public the fact that he beat and molested his own daughters. With a few words she can ruin him in his new life as Edward Archer.”

“The past can be a son of a bitch,” Pearl said, maybe thinking of Yancy.

Helen nodded. “Even though Erin professes to hate Keller, he’s her former husband. She’s got a difficult phone call to make. It won’t be easy for her to put him in a vise and squeeze.”

“Oh, it might be,” said Pearl.

“Do you think she will squeeze?” Quinn asked.

“I think she’s a woman who can,” Helen said.

Half an hour later, Fedderman called.

“When Erin left the office she got into a cab,” he told Quinn. “She went to Fifth Avenue and did some window-shopping, and then hailed another cab. She just went into her hotel.”

“Window shopping,” Quinn said. “That’s interesting.”

“Maybe it helps her think.”

“Hang around a while longer,” Quinn told Fedderman. “Make sure she doesn’t come back out, but if she does, tail her.”

“Done,” Fedderman said, and broke the connection.

Quinn slowly hung up the phone. “She’s going to make us wait for her answer,” he said. “In her own way, our Erin’s something of a control freak.”

“You think?” Helen said. She was smiling.

“Those twins,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “They must have gone through hell when they were kids.”

“One of them’s still in hell,” Helen said.

“How long do you figure it’ll be before Erin makes up her mind?”

Helen shrugged. “You might think in terms of hours or days. It depends on what Erin wants and how much she wants it.”

Twenty minutes later Erin called Quinn and gave him Edward Archer’s cell phone number.

“See how he reacts to your proposition,” she said. “Then I’ll talk to him.”

Quinn told her he thought that was reasonable.

Twenty minutes past noon in Manhattan. It was the second day in a row the killer had returned to the same park bench at the same time. He’d brought a small white paper sleeve of popcorn both times, purchased, he guessed, from the same street vendor Elana Dare had frequented.

It was another warm day, and the scent of blooms on nearby bushes carried on the gentle breeze. People bustled past, and traffic roared like distant lions and was visible beyond the low stone wall that marked the park’s boundary. The sidewalks were crowded with worker drones striding to and from lunch. The walkway in front of the bench wasn’t as busy as the sidewalk, but plenty of people were in the park.

The bench rocked as a ragged homeless man plopped himself down on the opposite end. He smelled of urine and booze and needed a shave almost to the point where you’d have to say he had a beard. His untucked shirt was bunched where the neck of a bottle in his pants pocket protruded. His eyes were fogged but alert.

“Don’t sit there,” the killer said.

The man looked at him in surprise from beneath a ledge of bushy gray eyebrows; he was used to being ignored.

“Not your bench,” he said, his voice gruff from infrequent use.

The killer remained firm. “I’ve got it leased for the day.”

“I’m subleasing it.”

The killer reached into his pocket, and the man looked alarmed. Seeing this, the killer smiled. This kind of person lived outside the system and in almost constant fear. Dealing with him should be easy for someone who knew how to use that fear.

“Let’s say I’ve got an NYPD badge in my pocket and I’m going to show it to you,” the killer said. “At that point, things will start to happen. Is that really what you want?”

The man stared at him for a long time; then he stood up unsteadily and walked away, He walked slowly and without glancing back, preserving what was left of his shredded dignity and saving the killer the two dollars he was going to pay him to leave.

Seizing opportunity was an art. So was recognizing it.

The killer absently reached into his narrow paper sack and pulled out a few puffs of popcorn and poked them into his mouth. The burned salt aroma rising from the bag triggered his hunger, and he was glad he’d brought the popcorn even though it was a prop.

Propcorn
, he thought, smiling. Maybe he should patent it.

Propportunity?

A hundred feet down the path, two skateboarders rushed and rattled along, flanking three walkers who had to bunch tightly together to avoid being bumped. One of the skateboarders veered away and stepped off his board in a manner that caused it to nose up at a sharp angle. He snatched it out of the air and began an easy, youthful jog.

Behind him, walking, she appeared.

She hadn’t seen him yet and was watching the other skateboarder, who’d shot far ahead. The killer noticed with satisfaction that she was holding a bag of popcorn identical to his.

Her clothes were more casual today—jeans, sandals, a red T-shirt with
FDNY
printed on it. She was small, narrow-waisted, and busty. Her long dark hair had a slight wave in it. Like Pearl’s.

She saw him and paused, pretending, he was sure, that she was surprised. He knew then that she’d thought he might be here. That she’d come hoping he was here. There was a tingling satisfaction and anticipation in his mind and body, as if he were a fisherman whose hook had just set. The fun part was ahead.

She continued to the bench and sat down, not on the opposite end but about two feet away from him. She hadn’t completely lost her expression of surprise. “Small park,” she said.

He smiled. “Wouldn’t want to mow it.”

Her laugh was music. “That joke has a familiar ring to it.”

“Happens every spring,” he said.

She opened the paper sack she was carrying and began tossing popcorn out onto the bare earth and littered pavement in front of the bench. As before, pigeons magically appeared.

When a squirrel came close, she stopped throwing popcorn. She bent low, picked up a small pebble, and threw it in the direction of the squirrel, deliberately missing it but scaring it away.

“Not a fan of squirrels?” he asked.

“No. They scare away the pigeons.”

“Some people think they’re cute.”

“I’m not one of them. Squirrels are rats with decorative tails.”

“I agree.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I agree with everything you say. That’s so you might have lunch with me, Elana.”

With the squirrel observing from about fifty feet away, she began tossing popcorn again. “You remembered my name.”

“It’s the most beautiful name I ever heard.”

“That’s Maria.”

“No, no. It’s Elana. I once met a girl named Elana.” He put on a horror-stricken expression. “You forgot
my
name!”

“Gerald Lone,” she said.

“Wow! After two days. That must mean you’ll have lunch with me.”

“After the pigeons are finished eating.”

“Fair enough, especially for the pigeons.” He reached into his paper sack and, like Elana, began feeding the insatiable birds. “Are you on your lunch hour?” he asked.

She shook her head no. “Like a lot of other people in this city, I’m between jobs.”

“Firefighter?” He pointed at the T-shirt lettering distorted by her oversized breasts.

“No,” she said. “Just a fan.”

“So am I.”

“What about you?” she asked. “Are you gainfully employed?”

“I’m in software. That means I have to travel a lot. What was—or I guess I mean what
is
—your field?”

“Accounting. I was junior accountant for a chain of shoe stores. When they cut expenses, I was one of them.”

“Heels. They should have kept you around just to look at.”

She gave him a phony demure look and giggled.

“Women aren’t supposed to be good at math,” he said.

Now her look was anything but demure. “I’m good at lots of things women aren’t supposed to be good at.” Playing him while he was playing her. Not knowing he was way, way out of her league. He was going to enjoy this.

He smiled at her. “Isn’t that bag about empty?”

She grinned and dumped the remaining popcorn onto the ground. He did the same with his popcorn.

He knew this was going to work. This was going to work just fine.

As they strolled from the park, they crumpled the popcorn bags and dropped them into a trash receptacle. They walked closer together. Both of them knocked salt from their fingers by brushing their hands together, as if in strange, hushed applause to celebrate the end of loneliness.

Behind them the pigeons went into a feeding frenzy, and the squirrel returned.