Twist (28 page)

M
isty with pain, her eyes were only half open now. The only sounds that came from her were those muffled mewlings, like the last laments of a dying kitten.

Slowly, skillfully, he used the knife on her. The mewling became a slightly louder sound, a prolonged “
Aaawwww” that might have been an expression of hopelessness and surrender
, of supreme disappointment. As he worked the knife, removing things, her body began to bounce, and then was still.

He bent over her, watching her eyes,
watching, watching....

The moment came and went.

They had shared the experience.

From his briefcase he withdrew one of the plastic Ladies.

There was enough blood that he wouldn’t need any more lubricant.

It was still hot in the Q&A offices. Humid and oppressive. Maybe not so much because it was a warm morning, and the city’s concrete still radiated heat. Maybe more because of the mood. Or maybe it was because the office smelled like the inside of an old jogging shoe.

“You got any spray air freshener in here?” Jody asked. “Even if it’s bug spray.”

“No,” Pearl said simply.

“Phew! How can you—”

“Back it up,” Quinn said. Then: “There!”

They were all looking at Liberty Island ferry security tape, and there, according to Quinn, was Dred Gant.

But was it really Dred Gant?

Quinn stared at the man frozen in mid stride on the flat screen. He’d recognized the way he walked, with an almost imperceptible hitch. It was from the time years ago when the egg farmer had shot him in the leg. Quinn knew this because he’d been shot in the thigh himself. When the bone healed, it drew in part of the gouge the bullet had made, leaving one leg slightly shorter than the other, or set at a slightly different angle. Quinn had seen tape of himself walking. He had the same slight but distinctive hitch in his stride.

Judging by the people around him, Gant was average size and weight. Nothing at all distinctive about him except, maybe, that walk.

The problem was, Quinn couldn’t see Gant’s face because of the spread and bill of the NYPD eight-point uniform hat he was wearing. He was also wearing the pullover the Harbor Unit called a wind shirt.

“It’s Gant, I’m sure,” Quinn said. “I recognize his walk.”

Fedderman shook his head, staring at the TV. “No one else would be sure.”

Quinn knew that was probably true. There really were no gradations of
sure
.

“You can’t see much of his face because of the hat’s bill and the downward angle of the security cameras,” Pearl said.

“They mount the cameras high that way to get a wide angle,” Fedderman said. “Then they can’t tell what the hell they’ve got. Someday they’ll learn.”

“That’s him,” Quinn said. “He was on the island.”

“We know that,” Pearl said. “He killed a cop on the ferry. Name of Bill Straitham. Stabbed him three times in the heart. Stole his badge and eight-point hat.”

“No, he was
on
the island, not just on the boat.”

“He was trading up when it came to clothes,” Fedderman said. “I’ve done that in Goodwill.”

“Meaning?” Jody asked. She was seated in one of the client chairs, knees drawn up, hugging both legs, listening and learning.

“He was looking more like a real cop, every chance he got,” Pearl said.

Quinn said, “The same guy, on the earlier Island security tape, had on an NYPD blue baseball cap.”

“Meaning?” Jody asked again.

“Earlier cap, earlier tape. We know he was on the island
before
he killed the cop.”

“Mean—”

“Meaning he was spooked and ran. Something made him change his plans. Helen was right. We’ve got a hold on this bastard. We just have to figure out how to use it.”

“What hold?” Jody asked.

“We moved him onto that island, almost nailed his ass, and he knows it. His confidence has to be shaken. If we moved him there, we can move him somewhere else, and be there at the same time.”

“Guy like that,” Pearl said. “I doubt if he sees it that way. He’s probably enjoying playing games.”

“Enjoying it so much he can’t resist it,” Helen said.

She’d come in without anyone noticing. Quinn was surprised again how she moved so silently and smoothly for such a big woman.

“We were just talking about how we owed you a tip of the hat,” Fedderman said. “We got the killer where we wanted him. Spooked him so he rabbited. Then he got lucky.”

“Resourceful and lucky,” Helen said. “Renz told me there’s security tape, and he sent it over.”

“It’s on the screen,” Quinn said, “stopped where it’s important.”

Helen squinted at the image on the flat screen. “You sure that’s him?”

Quinn told her about the limp.

“Pretty scant,” she said.

“He doesn’t know that,” Jody said.

They all looked at her.

“Any ideas?” Quinn asked the room in general, having one himself but waiting for someone else to come up with it. Wondering who it would be.

“What we do now,” Helen said, “is call Minnie Miner, and then make sure she gets a copy of that tape.”

Quinn smiled inwardly.
Helen. He should have guessed.

Quinn made the call.

Minnie Miner was so overjoyed she would have crawled through the phone line, if she hadn’t been on her cell.

“Who authored this strategy?” she asked.

“Helen Iman. But there’s nothing in writing.”

“You know what I mean. I’m going to see that Helen gets a raise in pay.”

“But she doesn’t work for you.”

“I’m a taxpayer,” Minnie said. “She works for me.”

“Minnie . . .”

But Minnie was gone from the ether.

“She was happy?” Helen asked, when Quinn had hung up.

Quinn nodded. “Orgasmic. She thinks you should get a raise. Thinks she can give you one because she’s a taxpayer.”

“Damn right.”

Pearl was about to say something when Quinn’s desk phone jangled. He picked up quickly so she’d think twice if twice was needed.

The caller was Renz, and he spoke up before Quinn was finished with his brief “Q&A Investigations” phone greeting that was by now as automatic as if it were electronic.

“Guess what we got,” Renz said.

“Yankees tickets?”

“Sort of. Murderers Row.”

Q
uinn and Pearl took Quinn’s old Lincoln and drove to the address Renz had given them.

By the time they got there, the rest of the troops had been called out. One side of the street had been cordoned off. There were patrol cars parked at careless angles to the curb. An ambulance was backed in, lights out. Quinn and Pearl knew it was waiting for the body to be released. From what Renz had said on the phone, there was nothing here to be revived.

Beyond the ambulance, neatly parked at the curb, was the black Ford that the nasty little ME Nift drove. If Pearl noticed it she gave no sign. They got out of the parked Lincoln and walked toward the building’s entrance.

T
HE
P
ADMONT
B
LDG,
proclaimed an engraved brass plaque mounted near the doors.

“Nice address,” Pearl said. “The victim had a lot to lose.”

A uniform was on station in the marbled lobby. He pointed toward the elevator, said, “Fifth floor.”

Quinn and Pearl rose to Five.

The murder apartment was two doors down from where the elevator door slid open. Another uniform was standing guard in the hall outside the open apartment door. Beyond him, inside, they could see shadow movement, now and then a person, as the crime scene unit did its meticulous work.

Pearl entered first, followed closely by Quinn. A CSU guy handed each of them a pair of thin rubber gloves, which they fitted to their hands as they made their way to where the body was, in the bedroom.

The main bedroom, actually, because the apartment had three of them.

The other two bedroom doors were open about halfway, but straight ahead was the largest bedroom, beyond a fully opened door.

They entered. The CSU was finished in there, and the only other live people in the room were Harley Renz and his sometimes flunky and spy, Nancy Weaver. Quinn hoped Renz wasn’t going to sic Weaver on them to gather information he could use to blame anyone but himself if they failed to stop this killer. That would be like Renz. And like Weaver.

Weaver was an attractive woman with a devilish glitter in her brown eyes. Her dark hair was straight and worn in severe bangs that for some reason made her look vaguely Egyptian. She smiled and winked at Quinn and nodded to Pearl. Pearl had never much liked her, but at the same time they understood each other. Women of the world.

Renz was standing back a few feet, his hand cupped to his chin in what was an obvious pose, staring at what was on the bed.

“Good Christ!” Pearl said.

The woman on the bed was on her back with her wrists and ankles bound together to the headboard so that she was rolled back and her buttocks were exposed. What was left of her buttocks.

Nift the ME got busy, probing the corpse’s pubic area with a pointed steel instrument. He looked over at Pearl, amused. Nift was one of the few people Quinn knew who could get under Pearl’s skin.

Nift grinned at Pearl. “Ass looks like hamburger,” he said. “The killer’s usual ritual, scourging them. You know the kind of whip I mean, Pearl. Badasses in medieval times tortured their enemies with them.”

Pearl knew. She’d seen a whip of the sort used for scourging. It had bits of sharp metal braided into it and caused horrible pain and damage.

“He didn’t forget her tummy,” Nift said.

The corpse’s stomach had been cut C-section style, as with the other victims, and some internal organs and lengths of intestine lay beside her.

And there was something else.

“That’s this victim’s Lady Liberty statuette,” Renz said, seeing where Quinn was looking. “Hard to recognize under all that blood and what have you. This time he inserted it in his victim’s anus.”

Quinn looked at the mess of blood and feces, and the object protruding from it.

“That’s the technical term,” Nift said to Pearl. “Must’ve hurt like blazes.”

Pearl gave him a look. “You should know.”

Quinn rested a hand on her shoulder, gave her a squeeze. Their signal for her to shut up.

When he was sure Pearl had her temper under control, Quinn glanced around. There was something about this room, about the part of the apartment they’d been in. Nothing was out of place or set at a wrong angle. The walls were too bare. There were no small items lying about.

Weaver had been watching him with half a smile, as if wondering when he was going to catch on. “Nobody lives here,” she said. “The dead woman’s name was Gigi Beardsley. She was in real estate. She still had her master key that unlocks those clunky metal box things they put on vacant properties so all the agents can show them. Door key is inside the box. A real estate key was needed to get in the box and then to get in here.”

“You said ‘
still
’ had her master key,” Quinn said.

Renz spoke up. “Seems Gigi was fired yesterday, not long before she was killed.”

“But she still had her key.”

“Yeah. All longtime employees have master keys. But Gigi hardly ever used hers. She was in human resources and rarely showed property, so giving it back must have just slipped her mind.”

“Not her lucky day,” Nift said, putting away his instruments in a plastic bag so he could keep them separate and sterilize them back at the morgue. “Except it was her good fortune Lady Liberty didn’t go in torch first.”

This time Pearl ignored him. “Gigi spelled with a
G
, I take it,” she said to Renz.

“Two
G’
s, actually. Our guy is still alphabetically inclined.” Renz motioned with his head in the general direction of the bathroom. “There’s a ‘Freedom to Kill’ message scrawled on the mirror in blood, like at the other scenes. CSU took samples, but it’s no doubt the victim’s blood. The killer probably uses his gloved finger to dip into blood and write.”

“You can see where he dipped,” Weaver said, pointing. There were half a dozen swipes in the spilled blood on the mattress.

“He used his writing finger to get blood from her ass,” Nift said, glancing at Pearl. He smiled. “Fecal matter is present on the mirror.”

“Must have gone back and forth, between bedroom and bathroom,” Quinn said. “Took his time.”

“Or he coulda loaded up with blood once and gone with it into the bathroom,” Nift said. “ ’Specially the blood from her ass. She was still alive when he put that statuette to her. That had to have been a fountain.”

“The letters would get lighter as they were written if he dipped his finger only once,” Quinn said. “They don’t.”

“Very good,” Nift said, as if Quinn had done well noting something he, Nift, had known all along. Sort of a test.

“Is there a doorman for this building?”

“No,” Renz said, “but I bet there will be.”

“So she had the keys to this apartment and knew it was unoccupied,” Quinn said.

“It was with more keys on a big ring. Lab’s got it. And the lockbox itself.”

“So who actually owns this place?”

“Belongs to some guy who’s out of the country,” Renz said. “He won’t be happy to hear about this.”

“Odds are she came here with the killer willingly. She was the one with the knowledge that it existed—and she had the key.”

“Odds are
she
seduced
him
,” Nift said.

“You wanna try her for murder?” Pearl snapped.

Nift shut up and concentrated on bagging his instruments. He closed and latched his black case, then put on the suit coat he’d carefully folded and draped over a chair back.

“Got an approximate time of death?” Quinn asked him.

“Between one and five a.m.,” Nift said. “Looks like the torture started before midnight, though.” He smiled in a way that made his face particularly ugly. “This killer must have studied the Spanish Inquisition or something. Our Gigi must have suffered horribly before he let her die.”

“Nice to know you’re concerned,” Pearl said.

Nift shrugged. “I’d always heard real estate is a tough business.”

“When you have more on this,” Quinn said, “give me a call. No matter what time it is.”

“Will do.” Nift adjusted his cuffs and buttoned his suit coat. “You understand that all of this, at the scene, is preliminary.”

“Sure. Everything we goddamn do is preliminary.”

“Okay to release the body?” Renz asked.

“If the CSU people are finished, no reason not to,” Nift said. “But I should tell you there’s something a little different about this murder. I’ve seen the other victims, the nature of their wounds—especially the torture wounds. There was a special rage behind this. He was mad at her.”

“You talking about the statue up her ass?” Renz asked.

“Among other things.”

“They’d only just met,” Quinn said. But even as he spoke, he realized he was assuming. He’d imagined a brief scenario: woman fired from her job, depressed, goes drinking, meets man who will love and console her, at least for one night.

Gets a surprise.

Nift shrugged. “Okay, don’t listen to what I got to say. But just remember, he was extra-special mad at this one.”

 

 

“That makes sense,” Helen said.

She was wearing baggy sweatpants this morning, and a loose-fitting T-shirt. The clothes made her look not just tall, but larger. A scent of slightly perfumed heat and perspiration wafted from her. It wasn’t unpleasant. More a healthy scent. She might have jogged here, for all Quinn knew. He thought Helen might have lived earlier as some kind of Viking warrior queen.

“Makes sense how?” he asked.

“The killer would possess a special rage for this victim. So soon after what almost happened on Liberty Island. That had to be a close call for him, a reminder of what
can
happen. Of what almost inevitably
will
happen.”

Pearl was seated on the front edge of her desk so she could be part of Quinn and Helen’s conversation. “Because he wants it to happen,” she said.

Helen nodded. “In his own sick way, yes. He wants it more and more, even though he tries to deny it.”

“It’s what they all want,” Quinn said. “They finally get frustrated with it
not
happening.”

“Being so close to her, though,” Helen said. “It must have been quite an experience. It must have triggered a lot of horrible reactions in his mind. Maybe she scared the hell out of him.”

“No doubt she did,” Quinn said, imagining.

“We talking about the Statue of Liberty?” Pearl asked.

“We are,” Quinn said.

“His mother,” Helen said.