Mister X (20 page)

Joyce House’s neighbors didn’t provide much help. The crime had taken place behind a locked door and in the privacy of the victim’s bedroom. The victim had been gagged. No shot had been fired. No blow had been struck with a blunt instrument. No body had crashed to the floor. Perhaps there had been the snick of blade on bone, but aside from that the sharp knife had done its work in silence.

A woman who lived down the hall from Joyce said she’d noticed Joyce walking on the street near her apartment building with a man a few days ago. But other than saying he was medium height and weight, she couldn’t help. It had been raining, and both Joyce and the man had been walking into the downfall, holding their open umbrellas low so their faces were visible only in glimpses.

Other than that brief sighting, none of Joyce’s neighbors could recall seeing her with a man.

EMS paramedics had removed the body. The crime scene unit had left, and Joyce’s apartment was sealed. Most of the yellow crime-scene tape had been removed, and only one uniformed officer stood watch near the building’s entrance. Onlookers had drifted away.

There was nothing more to hold their interest.

Yet when Quinn, Pearl, Fedderman, and Vitali left the building they saw a woman standing very still across the street and staring at them. She was wearing a gray windbreaker and a dark blue baseball cap. Her arms were crossed, and her weight was on one leg. Her attitude was that of someone waiting.

A black car suddenly turned the corner and veered in toward the curb in front of the building.

Mishkin in the unmarked. He’d driven over to the diner where Joyce House had worked and interviewed people there who knew her.

The arrival of the car, and Mishkin getting out, temporarily distracted everyone’s attention. When they looked back across the street, the woman was gone.

Vitali said, “Shit!” and jogged across the street. Pearl followed.

Fedderman began to tag after them, but slowed after a few steps and looked around with his hands on his hips. Sal ran all the way to the end of the block and rounded the corner.

Quinn had looked up and down the street and didn’t see much hope for catching up with the woman. There were too many ways she could have gone to lose them.

It didn’t take long for Pearl and Fedderman to return.

Sal came back within a few minutes, breathing hard. “Gone like a ghost,” he said.

“Our shadow woman?” Mishkin asked.

“Could have been,” Quinn said. “If it was just somebody stopping for a moment to gawk, she wouldn’t have made herself disappear so soon. It had to be that she didn’t want us to catch her.”

“More grist for Cindy Sellers’s print mill,” Pearl said.

“How will she find out—” Mishkin began, then stopped. The others were looking at him. They were hardly going to omit mention of the woman’s presence in their report to Renz; they all knew Sellers would get the information from him. Being secretive simply meant to delay the information in making its predictable circuit.

“Maybe we’re getting spooked,” Pearl said. “People move when you’re not looking at them all the time, so that when you glance back they’re gone. It’s just that we’re looking for this woman. We’re almost expecting to see her, and maybe that’s why we do.”

“That didn’t look like a mirage Sal was chasing,” Quinn said.

“She always wears something so you can’t see her face,” Fedderman said.

“What was it this time?” Pearl said. “A baseball cap. Some disguise. What? Were we supposed to think she was Derek Jeter?”

“She had the bill pulled down,” Fedderman said. “Wore it facing full front and down so her face was in shadow.”

“I wear my Mets cap that way when the sun’s in my eyes,” Pearl said.

“But you were right here with us, so we know it wasn’t you,” Fedderman said.

Pearl gave him a dead-eyed look. “I hate it when you play dumb, Feds. And it really isn’t necessary.”

Mishkin smiled slightly, and Vitali gave a gravelly laugh.

Pearl had both hands clenched into fists. Never a good sign.

“What’d you find out at the diner?” Quinn asked Mishkin, getting the conversation on another track that wouldn’t lead to a train wreck.

“Everybody loved Joyce,” Mishkin said.

“They mention anyone she seemed to love back?”

“No, but it’s not the kind of place where the servers mix with the customers except to see they get their food and checks.” Mishkin shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. “The owner-operator of the place, a guy named Mick, seems to have a thing about his employees getting too friendly with the customers, like they’re going to conspire to steal tidbits from the kitchen.”

“So if Joyce and anybody she met at the diner developed a relationship, they might keep it secret so she wouldn’t lose her job.”

“Which means our killer might be a frequent customer at the diner,” Fedderman said. “We should check out the regulars.”

“Actually,” Quinn said, “I was thinking of anyone who might have
stopped
eating there.”

“The dog that didn’t bark in the night,” Pearl said.

Fedderman said, “Dog? Night?”

“Think we should go back there?” Pearl asked, ignoring him.

“For breakfast,” Quinn said. “As I recall, Joyce worked the early shift. You and Feds go there tomorrow and have the special on the city. Then talk to the boss and whoever else might have worked some of the same hours as the victim.”

Pearl made a face. “Breakfast with Fedderman. Just how I wanna start the day.”

“It’ll be like a date, Pearl,” Fedderman said with mock cheer.

“It’ll be like most of your dates,” Pearl said. “All you’ll get is indigestion.”

Quinn glanced around. “Since you’re all here, it’s a good time to inform you about another development.”

And he told them about Erin Keller.

Back at the office, Quinn gave his detectives, including Vitali and Mishkin, the name of Erin’s hotel, the Melbourne, and more fully described his meeting with her.

They all listened closely, temporarily forgetting about the heat and the humming and occasionally hammering air conditioner.

They were particularly interested in Erin’s reaction to their client’s photograph.

“So now we’ve got two missing women,” Sal said. “Chrissie and whoever impersonated Chrissie.”

“And they look nothing alike,” Fedderman added.

The phone on Quinn’s desk rang. He nodded at Pearl, and she picked up the receiver. “Quinn and Associates.”

The phone greeting still didn’t sound familiar to Quinn; he’d been too long in the NYPD.

Pearl held the receiver out to him and silently mouthed,
Renz.

“You got anything fresh on House?” Renz asked when Quinn had gotten on the line.

“Nothing that would excite you,” Quinn said.

“I had a rush preliminary done on the postmortem. The victim was alive up until the time her throat was slashed. There was plenty of blood on the panties stuffed in her mouth, but it was all hers. CSU found some hairs that might be anybody’s. The place had been wiped of prints here and there, where the killer must have touched things. Also there were some glove smudges. There was a wine bottle in the trash. Merlot. No prints on that, and no DNA. Couple of wineglasses in the dishwasher, also clean of prints. Some red wine in the victim’s stomach, too. Same as what was left in the bottle. Musta been a party.”

“Up to a point,” Quinn said.

“Or an edge. We got the hairs, anyway, some of them with follicle attached, so we got DNA samples. We get a suspect and make a match and we might have our killer.”

“Getting the suspect is the problem,” Quinn said, thinking if the suspect had ever been in Joyce House’s apartment at any time before the night of the murder, the hair and DNA match could have come from an earlier visit and not be much in the way of hard evidence.

“Looks like they came home to her place with a bottle of wine—or she already had the bottle there. Then they had drinks, maybe cunnilingus sex, and murder. They musta known each other, had some kind of ongoing relationship.”

“If they didn’t meet that night. And if she wasn’t raped.”

“Nift is pretty sure she wasn’t raped. Didn’t anybody know who she was screwing?”

“Nobody we’ve found so far,” Quinn said. “She might have had some kind of secret relationship.”

“A married man?”

“Or somebody where she worked. The guy who runs the place and his employees don’t seem likely. But she’d pretend not to know a customer who was a lover. Her boss had a strict policy of not mixing pleasure with business, and that kind of affair might have caused her to lose her job.”

“Love will find a way,” Renz said. “You checking on the diner’s regular customers?”

“We’re on it,” Quinn said, deciding not to go into detail with Renz.

“It’s worth pursuing,” Renz said. “Way to go about that is to check and see if any of the regulars suddenly stopped eating there, so if he was banging Joyce House they could keep it a secret.”

“Good idea.”

“How’s our girl Addie Price working out?” Renz asked.

“Fine. She knows her job.”

“She came highly recommended. And she’s media savvy, too. Listen close to her if she has ideas on how to handle the wolves.”

“Wolves like Cindy Sellers?”

“I’ve got that wolf domesticated,” Renz said.

Quinn almost laughed into the phone. He turned his head so Renz wouldn’t hear.

“Partly, anyway.” Renz might have heard something. “Keep me up on things, Quinn.”

Quinn said that he would, and they ended the conversation.

Quinn filled everyone in on what Renz had told him about the postmortem and CSU findings.

“We got diddly shit,” Vitali said.

“Except for the dog-in-the-night angle,” Fedderman said. “That one’s worth pursuing.”

“That’s what Renz said,” Quinn told him.

“Now I am worried,” Fedderman said.

Two hours later, Fedderman dropped a sheet of copy paper on Quinn’s desk. “That dog in the night didn’t hunt. The owner and employees said there were three regular customers that recently stopped coming into the diner where Joyce House worked. Two were women. We did an Identi-Kit on the third.”

Quinn studied the image the police artist had created from voice description. An average-looking man, short haircut, firm chin, neither too fat nor too thin.

“Make a good spy, wouldn’t he?” Fedderman said.

“Yeah. He look familiar to you?”

“Uh-huh. But he’s got one of those faces.”

“I guess that’s it,” Quinn said.

“No way to trace him from the diner,” Fedderman said. “Mr. Nobody.”

“Maybe he planned it that way.”

“But probably he’s just a guy,” Fedderman said. “Mighta found a hair in his food and started eating someplace else. Could happen to anyone.”

“So could what happened to Joyce House.”

Quinn seated himself at his desk in his den that evening. He already had a cigar burning, and was carrying a glass containing Famous Grouse over ice with a splash of water. He was in his socks, and his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down and untucked. Comfortable.

When he was settled, he slid open the desk’s middle drawer and withdrew his yellow legal pad. He didn’t see a pen, so he picked up a reasonably sharp pencil that had toothmarks and a worn-down eraser. He noticed it was the exact yellow as the legal pad.

Beneath
(Trust no one.)
he began to write in his sloppy but legible hand:

Quinn dropped the pencil and leaned back, studying the legal pad. It told him nothing, but it raised an uneasy feeling. There was a lot about this case that wasn’t right. Nothing fully formed in his mind yet, but not right. He couldn’t quite grasp the solution to the puzzle, but it was there ahead of him. He could sense its amorphous presence even if he couldn’t see it.

He concentrated on his cigar and scotch and felt oddly satisfied. He was getting somewhere, even if he wasn’t sure where.

It had to be soon. A person could wait only so long, could only fight off such a compulsion so long. Not to give in to it was to be devoured by it. He’d never dreamed it could be like this, that the
need
could come on so suddenly and be so powerful.

The bothersome thing was that the times, the women, were coming closer together and without predictable intervals. Predictable intervals made it easier to plan. To be in control.

Control was what it was all about. Control bestowed by destiny. Once begun, if it was meant to happen, it would.

Not to give in to it was to be devoured by it.

Joyce House had been the best. She’d struggled with her fate enough to make it interesting, to satisfy the need, but not so much as to make things truly difficult and perhaps more dangerous.

The change in her eyes hadn’t occurred too soon, and when it came it was complete. She was already dead and knew it. All that was necessary then was the acting out, and she readily gave herself up to that. She was ready to end it, to end herself, to end the future, past, and present, and to begin the forever.

Perhaps because Joyce had been so satisfying, the need was back sooner than anticipated. Not a demon fully formed, but forming.

Joyce’s image played on the screen of the mind, her eyes when she saw the knife and understood the inevitability of the blade, when she felt the caressing point of the blade, the course of the blade.

The blade.

Her eyes.

Her eyes.

It had to be soon.

They’d had dinner and red wine at Orzo’s, near Pearl’s apartment. She’d had the four-cheese ravioli special, and Yancy the lamb and new potatoes. Before leaving the restaurant, Yancy had gone to the bar and bought a second bottle of merlot. He carried it in a plain brown paper bag as they walked toward Pearl’s apartment.

Pearl let Yancy set the pace, which was moderate. It was a calm, cool evening, with a light fog that had settled in while they were inside the restaurant. The glow of streetlights was starred, and there was a halo around the service lights of cabs. Pearl thought it would make a nice illustration for a don’t-you-wish-you-were-in-New York card.

When they came to an intersection and stopped walking to wait for a traffic signal, Yancy shifted the paper bag to his other hand, as if it was heavy.

“There gonna be a celebration?” Pearl asked, nodding toward the bag.

Yancy grinned down at her. “Could be. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

The signal changed, and they crossed the street.

“I’m glad you didn’t ask what,” Yancy said.

“I don’t believe in pointless questions,” Pearl said.

“I’ll ask most any kind. Is your mother getting any more used to the idea of me?”

“She doesn’t get used to ideas. She’s still dismayed that I’d take up with a scoundrel like you, and frankly so am I. But we don’t always have a choice in these matters.”

“Good thing for scoundrels like me.” They were silent for a few paces. “Did she really call me that—a scoundrel?”

“I don’t think so,” Pearl said. “It might have been wastrel.”

“Ah. Better.”

“You
are
a lobbyist,” Pearl said.

“For green power.”

“Does it really matter to you what kind of power you represent?”

“Actually, not in the slightest. I’m a hired advocate. I believe everyone should have the chance to have his or her case made. Every organization or special interest group. I do that professionally. Like a lawyer.”

“There are a lot of lawyer jokes.”

“Lots of cop jokes, too.”

“Ouch.”

Half a block of silence followed. It was a silence heavy with expectation. Pearl realized the palms of her hands were sweating. Something about that damned Yancy. Maybe her mother had a point.

They were almost to Pearl’s apartment.

Yancy said, “A good dinner, some wine…I thought it would lighten the mood.”

“The mood is light,” Pearl said.

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

Pearl stopped walking and moved around in front of Yancy. She kissed him on the lips, used her tongue, felt his hand close tightly on the nape of her neck.

She drew back, smiling up at him.

“There’s the mood,” she said.

He bent and kissed her on the forehead. “Perfect.”

They held hands the rest of the way.

As soon as they entered the apartment, Pearl kicked off her shoes.

Yancy stooped and placed the bag with the bottle of wine on the floor and then pulled her to him, and they kissed as they had out on the sidewalk. He worked the zipper in the back of her dress as smoothly as if he’d practiced it hundreds of times.

With a faint rustling sound, the dress slid down, and she lowered her arms so it would fall all the way and puddle at her feet. He hugged her to him again, and his right hand slid beneath her panties and over the smooth contours of her hips and buttocks. His left hand was at her back. Her bra strap came undone, and the bra slid down and almost off her breasts.

Jesus! Does he have three hands?

The bra slipped all the way off seemingly of its own volition, so its straps were at the crooks of her elbows, and he bent his body and kissed both her nipples. He stepped back, smiling at her, and she lowered her arms so the bra dropped to the floor with the dress.

Yancy left her panties on—for now. Before she knew it, he’d picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. She heard the soft crinkling sound of paper and realized that somehow he’d managed to pick up the bag containing the wine bottle.

After laying her gently on the bed, he removed the bottle from its bag. She saw that it had already been uncorked to the point where the stopper would slide from the neck with minimal effort. Two plastic wineglasses from the restaurant were also in the bag.

“For later,” he said, arranging the bottle and glasses on the nightstand.

“Let’s think about later…later,” Pearl said.

For a brief moment she wondered again if her mother might be right.

Then she forgot all about her mother.

Afterward Pearl lay on her back, gazing sideways across her pillow at Yancy. He was still breathing hard from the exertion of their lovemaking, staring up at the ceiling as if in deep thought.

“We’ve reached later,” Pearl said.

He looked over at her and smiled. Then he sat up and swiveled on the mattress so he could reach the wine bottle and glasses. He poured one glass, for her. She sat up and scooted so her back was against her wadded pillow and the headboard. She accepted the plastic wineglass and sipped. The wine tasted, even
felt
good, on her tongue and throat, after the way they’d made love. It was a good combination, she thought, sex and wine. Probably people had been enjoying it for centuries.

Yancy stood up from the bed and stared down at her with a combination of admiration and careful consideration, as if pondering whether to ask her to pose for a photograph.

Then he turned and walked from the room.

“Aren’t you going to have a glass?” Pearl asked.

“First the surprise,” he said, glancing back at her over his shoulder.

Pearl sighed, sipped, and waited.

It was such good wine, and strong. And relaxing. She tilted back her head and breathed deeply of the scent and warmth of both their bodies, and felt contentment. Yancy, she had to admit, knew how to treat a lady.

When he returned to the bedroom, still nude, he held one hand behind his back. Carrying something as he approached the bed.

Pearl smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He had an odd, serious look on his handsome face. Seriousness didn’t look right on him, like a hat that was way too big.

“Yancy?”

He raised his forefinger to his lips to signal silence and then sat down near her on the bed.

He brought his hand out from behind his back.

With a crash of knowledge that took her breath away, she saw what he was holding and knew exactly what it meant.

He opened the small, square box with rounded corners, removed a diamond engagement ring, and slipped it on her finger.