Slaughter (17 page)

A
n hour later, Renz called Quinn on his desk phone. “No doubt about it,” Renz said, when Quinn had picked up the bulky plastic receiver that fit hand and ear so well. “The crane falling was murder. There were traces of hydrofluoric acid found at the breaking points of the steel cables. It ate through the cables until enough strands popped that they finally broke apart under all that weight. That overloaded the stress on the other cables, then a small bomb separated the crane from the building and down it came. The thing is, whoever was responsible had to have some basic knowledge of how that crane was put together. How the damned thing worked.”

“Just like he knew about elevators,” Quinn said. “Was this the same kind of acid used on the elevator cables?”

“Yeah. The base was hydroflouride, along with nitric acid. A devil's brew, according to the techs. If you want to tote it around, you'll need a special container. Most likely it was outta the same lab.”

“Do the techs think our killer is a chemist?” Quinn asked.

“Not in any major way. But you don't have to be a chemist or engineering genius to know how to destroy something. Common sense goes a long way. To know how to build up is to know how to tear down.”

“But we're not necessarily looking for a scientist or engineer.”

“That's right,” Renz said. “Matter of fact, most of the info you need, you can find on the Internet.”

Quinn doubted if that would be reassuring to the public.

“The Internet and DNA,” Renz said. “One helps find them, and the other helps prove them guilty. Life gets harder and harder for the bad guys.”

“Can't get hard enough.”

“That's what my ex-wife used to say.”

“The crane cables are right out where anyone can see them,” Quinn pointed out. “Or get to them, depending on the position of the crane.”

“It gets better and better,” Renz said bitterly. “Where do psychos like the Gremlin learn this crap?”

“Like the artist told us,” Quinn said, “there's plenty of information on the Internet.” The main air conditioner in Q&A wasn't quite keeping up with the heat, and his clothes were stuck to him. There was some not-quite-cold-enough diet cola in the little fridge by the coffeemaker, but he chose not to have gas.

“The Internet is a school for crime,” Renz agreed.

“And the students get their advanced degrees in prison.”

“It shouldn't be like that.”

“Nobody's figured out a better way.”

“I know one.”

“I didn't hear that,” Quinn said.

“The Gremlin. I really hate that little bastard!”

“We'll find him, Harley.”

“Will we? They never found Jack the Ripper.”

“They might have, if he'd ever been listed in the FBI database.”

“Speaking of data . . .”

Quinn brought him up to date on the Little Louie and Madge interview.

“This is a mass murderer,” Renz said, when Quinn was finished talking and reading aloud. As if Quinn needed reminding.

“We've got a reliable eyewitness that puts him at the scene of the crane collapse,” Quinn said. “And we're working out a digital image that'll be as good as a photo, if it isn't already.”

“We've got everything but the criminal.”

“I wouldn't express it that way to the media,” Quinn said.

“So can I tell the press predators what you just told me? When I step outta here, they're gonna be on me like a pack of mad dogs.”

Quinn tried to imagine that but couldn't. Renz would surely have even larger mad dogs protecting him.

“I would tell the media only what I wanted them to know, Harley. At this point, we're using them instead of the other way around.”

Renz seemed to like that observation. Quinn wasn't so sure it was true, but at least it gave the illusion of progress.

“We clear on everything?” Renz asked. “Or do you have any questions that won't be wasting my time?”

Quinn said, “I didn't know you had an ex-wife.”

Renz hung up.

T
he next morning Quinn slept in and Pearl left the brownstone around seven o'clock to open the Q&A offices. The team of Sal and Harold were coming in early to prepare for an interview with the SBL Properties crane operator. He'd given his statement half a dozen times. Another wouldn't hurt.

So far there had been only the occasional small contradiction. The crane hadn't responded as usual to its controls. Quinn had heard that the operator was a redheaded guy named Perry, who looked about fourteen until a second look revealed he was about forty. He was still jumpy, and blamed himself for the crashing and carnage.

Of course, unless he was connected in some way to the acid that had melted some of the crane's cables, or to the shaped charge, he had no reason to feel guilt.

Quinn poured himself a cup of coffee and went out to the tiny secluded courtyard behind the brownstone. There was a small green metal table there, and three green metal chairs. They were rust-free and weatherproof as long as Quinn painted them every spring.

Randall, the bulldog that lived next door, began to bark up a storm, until he heard Quinn's voice and decided to be quiet.

One of these days, Quinn thought, Randall would be correct in his desperate prognosis of a catastrophe. Those were the odds, anyway. This kind of dog couldn't be wrong all the time.

After Quinn used a paper towel to wipe down the table and one of the chairs, he spread open the two newspapers

Pearl had left for him, the
Times
and the
Post
. Despite them being already read by Pearl, and maybe by Jody, they were folded in reasonably neat fashion. He used another paper towel, folded in quarters, as a makeshift coaster for his coffee cup.

It was a beautiful, clear morning, with only a breath of breeze. Quinn fired up one of his Cuban cigars. He hadn't kept up on the Mickey Mouse ordinances he kept hearing about. Didn't know if the Cubans had become legal yet or not. Whether and where in the city he could smoke any kind of cigar didn't much concern him. People who robbed and killed and blew up other people concerned him. Not if or where someone somewhere else was lighting up some tobacco.

Scofflaw bastard.

He sipped, inhaled, read.

The press didn't seem as interested in the particulars of fires or crashing cranes or elevators as they were in the two dead, beautiful dancers who had both been elevated by the media to the chorus line in
Other People's Honey.
The producers of the play knew how to wring tears and publicity from their prospective audience. There were plenty of questions to be asked. Had the two dancers died at the same time? In the same way? What were their last words? Did they suffer? Have husbands? children? (Neither was married or a mother.) What other plays or movies had they appeared in? What other celebrities did they know? Who were their favorites, not just in plays or in front of the cameras, but as real and dedicated human beings? Who was going to replace them in their current roles? Was the play now cursed?

Quinn sipped, smoked, and mulled over some of those questions, but not all.

 

 

In another part of town, Jordan Kray was avidly reading the same papers, plus the
Daily News.

He was famous, all right. Not as his real name, but that didn't matter. He knew, in the heart and depths of his fear, that at some point his real name would be revealed. It would be engraved on his tombstone or plaque.

Not the brief stint he'd done in the military. That might never be known. Not for sure. He'd joined under another name, another age, another mission.

But he wouldn't lose his professional name. The Gremlin. The ghost in the machine. He liked the ring of it. It was memorable. When he thought about it, the throbbing in his brain, the relentless thrashing sound, would usually subside.

People would visit his grave. The public would finally recognize the voracious fire of genuine greatness. And how it could consume the bearer of the gift.

They would know real fame, real celebrity, when they saw it, heard it, feared it. Right how it was merely a speck on the horizon, a red carpet unrolled.

Right now.

 

J
ordan Kray thought he'd be given a simple instruction by the farmer, whose name was Luther Farr: Get out.

But Luther apparently decided there might be too much risk involved. Things didn't stop growing, or rotting, because the hired help was . . . precariously balanced. Jordan seemed all right physically. In fact, he was a good worker, and there was still a lot of work to be done around the farm.

Jordan understood that his days and nights at the farm were limited. There was no way the family or any of the other Freedom Farm workers would understand. He had dismembered the goat to investigate its bone structure, see the thickness of the bones and sinew that permitted such butting power in such a small animal. How could anyone not realize that nothing wrong had been done? The goat was one of those animals people relied upon. It was leather, it was insulation, it was meat.

It was also cuter than a cow, and possibly more intelligent. Closer to the human mind if not body of the cow or ox. Or even the horse. When you looked into goats' eyes, they often looked back at you with a certain calculation. A message: We're both smarter than the hens. We should be friends and partners.

But of course that wasn't true. Not the last part, anyway.

You should be food. You should be sacrificial. Like in Sunday school.

What he didn't know was that the goat was Jasmine's favorite pet. And Jasmine was the farmer's favorite daughter.

Jasmine was sixteen, but mature for her age. Jordan was fond of her, or at least saw her as a desirable object. She seemed to return his interest. In fact, he was sure she'd developed a crush on him.

That could be useful.

A few times, Luther Farr had caught his daughter smiling at Jordan in a way he didn't like. But all that had happened so far were some cautionary, scathing looks. Still, Luther was planting the seed of fear in Jordan. And Luther was on the edge of understanding that a boy like Jordan wasn't rich soil in which fear might thrive. Something quite different from fear had already taken root.

One evening, at Jordan's request, he and Jasmine met secretly in a copse of elm trees. They were well beyond the farmhouse and its clapboard addition. The addition was where the help slept. Including Jordan.

There were half a dozen youths living and working at the farm. Jordan wasn't the only one there who'd had minor brushes with the law. What did people expect, from someone usually alone and with practically no money? There was in the land a catalyst that not many people had to experience: Hunger. Usually it was hunger that drove Jordan to larceny. Hunger and cold sometimes teamed up to edge him toward more serious crimes.

(Though he didn't think of them as crimes. Not by their strictest definition. If it was about survival, it wasn't criminal.)

Jasmine, who had ripened that year with the crops, sat with her coltish legs crossed on a small blue blanket she'd brought with her. It was with great reluctance that she'd agreed to meet Jordan this evening. She was still heartbroken over the death of her pet goat, Sadie. Yet still she felt the magnetism of Jordan when he was near her. Like tonight.

“I just don't understand why you did that to Sadie,” Jasmine said. Just thinking about it made her choke up so she could hardly breathe. But it was something she didn't understand. She truly wanted to understand.

Jordan moved closer to her. The toe of his shoe was on a corner of the blue blanket, as if it were a magic carpet and with one foot he could hold it down so she couldn't fly away. “I made sure she didn't feel anything,” he lied. “I was humane. And you know your dad was going to sell the goat before winter. I saved her from a less humane death. Sometimes you have to be firm to be kind. Anybody grew up on a farm oughta know that.”

“But still . . .”

“Also, I needed to see how Sadie differed.”

“From what?”

“The other goats. I mean, inside. The bone and muscle, how it moved.”

She stared at him with unblinking blue eyes. He could see she was not even beginning to understand.

“I don't see what the big deal is, if you think about it,” he said. “I mean, we eat goats. Parts of them, anyway. They're even killed sometimes as part of religious ceremonies.”

“Says who?”

“Says the Bible, Jasmine. You've heard of blood sacrifices?”

“Usually it's lambs that get sacrificed.”

“Well, a goat is a kind of lamb.”

“Not really.”

“Read your Bible,” Jordan said. “There are plenty of pictures of goats being sacrificed.” He wasn't actually sure of that.

She had to admit that she'd seen such pictures, though she couldn't recollect when or where. Sunday school, probably, during those services she'd been forced to attend. And he was right, people did eat lambs and goats.

“But not Sadie,” she said with brave certainty.

“It wouldn't matter to the goat,” Jordan said. “Except in goat heaven, maybe.”

Jasmine suspected he was putting her on, but that didn't make what he said untrue. Jordan liked to joke sometimes, and not take things serious that were serious. He was just like that, and when you came right down to it, she didn't mind all that much. He knew more of the world than she did, though he wasn't always as wise as he thought. He seemed kind of dangerous, even if he wasn't all that large a man. You didn't always see it, but it was there. She kind of liked that, too, in a way she didn't quite understand.

Jordan squatted down on the blanket's edge, producing a knife from somewhere. It wasn't a switchblade or any other kind of pocketknife; it had a broad, flat blade that came to a honed point. Like a bowie knife.

He smiled at her, and began tossing the knife in front of him so that it penetrated the blanket and stuck in the soil.

“That's the blanket I used for my dolls,” she said. Not warning him or asking him to stop. Simply giving him a nugget of partial understanding. A glimpse of her early childhood.

He continued to flip the knife expertly, so it made one revolution in the air and then stuck with the same solid
chuk!
in the ground beneath the blanket. The rhythmic, brutal sound, over and over, was hypnotic. Like something killing her childhood.

Jordan gazed deep into Jasmine's eyes, holding her gaze so she couldn't turn away.

Through an understanding smile he said, “The Bible tells us there comes a time to put away childish things.”

She knew that was true. She would have to face it someday. She fought back tears.

“I'll be here in the morning,” Jordan said. “I'll earn my final pay, then come evening I'll be gone. If you're here, we'll leave together. A new life will be ours.”

He wiped the knife blade clean with two swipes on the side of his thigh, then slid it into a leather scabbard. She saw that it had a yellowed bone handle as he sat down on the blanket and leaned toward her, kissing her, using his tongue, teaching her how to use hers.

Still kissing her, he bent her backward and placed her gently on the blanket. He began to unbutton her blouse, her shorts. Her clothes seemed to melt from her. She gazed off to the side, like billions of women before her, and for a second or two became as much observer as participant.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Not so soon. But now that it was happening, she didn't mind. Time kept rushing toward her, past her.

She lay back, her elbows supporting her at first, then all the way back, and spread her legs, welcoming him.

 

 

Afterward, Jasmine couldn't stop trembling. She knew what her father would think. Knew what he would tell her. It wouldn't be about Jesus and the blood of the sacrificed. It would be about commerce. The food chain.

Every living thing required a reason to exist.

A usefulness.

“Even people?” she would ask.

“Especially people.”

“Why should that be?” she would ask.

She hadn't yet heard a convincing answer.