Night Kills (7 page)

Nobody was laughing in the office on Seventy-ninth Street. Quinn and Fedderman were seated at their desks, facing each other across the room. Pearl was perched on the edge of her desk with her legs crossed, sipping coffee. The office smelled strongly of overbrewed coffee, which was an improvement over the usual smell of sawdust and powdered plaster. The workmen doing the rehabbing on the floors above were sawing and hammering, destroying so they could create. The noise wasn't loud enough to be a bother, but it was almost constant.

Quinn had just hung up his desk phone. He sat staring at it for a long moment before speaking, as if it was a memory aid.

“The M.E. says the arm belonged to a woman in her early thirties, maybe five feet nine or ten. She was average weight. The swelling and loose flesh we saw was from exposure to the water. No distinguishing marks or jewelry.” He leaned backward in his chair and crossed his arms. “Nift says the arm doesn't match either of the bodies.”

“He sure?” Fedderman asked in a surprised voice.

“The little twit's always sure,” Pearl said.

Quinn ignored her, as well as a burst of violent hammering. “Bones and flesh patterns don't match up, Feds. Also, we got a rush preliminary on DNA analysis. Enough info to know it doesn't match that of either of the two victims whose torsos we have. Even the blood type is different.”

“We might still be able to find out who she was. The woman whose arm we found. What about a DNA database match?”

“The FBI's running it through its computers, but I don't think we can hold out much hope there.”

Quinn knew the already vast database was still in its initial stages. The severed arm would have to belong to a woman who was a recently convicted felon and also had her DNA in the database. Those were long odds.

All three detectives sat silently and listened to the muffled hammering that punctuated the shrill cry of a power saw.

It was Pearl who finally said it. “We've got a third victim.”

“Or else another killer who's dismembering bodies,” Quinn said.

Fedderman noticed his shirt cuff was unbuttoned and fastened it. “Maybe the arm was cut off accidentally. By a boat propeller or something.”

Quinn smiled wryly. “River patrol's got no reports of any such accident, and nobody's reported their arm missing.”

“Third victim,” Pearl said again.

Nobody disagreed with her.

“The killer chopped off her hand, too,” Fedderman said.

“To be on the safe side and not risk fingerprints being lifted and compared someplace,” Pearl said, “even if they're not on file. His cautious nature worked in this case.”

Quinn sighed and stood up. “The rest of her might still be in the river. The rest of all of the victims might be there, or in some lake or tributary somewhere. I'll call Renz and see if we can get a search going, check bodies of water in or around New York.”

“Grappling hooks,” Pearl said. “That's how they drag a lake, with grappling hooks.” Though she'd seen several such operations, the thought of this one, for some reason, chilled her. Hard steel seeking soft flesh in the dark.

“They use underwater cameras now, too,” Quinn said.

“Divers,” Fedderman said. “Eventually somebody's gotta swim down there in murky water and look for weighted-down arms, legs, and heads.” He made a face and ran a hand over his almost nonexistent hair. “I'm glad I'm too old for that kinda stuff.”

“They might drain some of the smaller lakes,” Pearl told him.

He shook his head. “Yeah, but try draining the river. That's where we found the arm.”

“He's got a point,” Pearl said to Quinn.

“Global warming,” Fedderman said. “Eventually it'll dry up all the rivers. That's when we'll find the missing body parts.”

Pearl sipped her coffee.

“Global warming,” Fedderman said again. “A cop's best friend.”

 

“Severed arm?” Cindy Sellers asked into the phone. She was at her desk at
City Beat.
She kept her voice low so Howie Baker, at the next desk, wouldn't overhear. “Just an arm? How do we know it has anything to do with either of the two torso victims?”

“We know for sure it doesn't,” Nift said nervously. He was calling with his cell phone a few blocks from the morgue. You never knew about phones. Just about any phone might not be secure these days. Not to mention cameras. They were getting to be all over the place in New York City. He wanted to get the call over with as soon as possible. “I can guarantee you that arm's not connected to either of the other victims' torsos.”

“Obviously,” Cindy said.

She was used to her informer's gruesome sense of humor and assumed that was what she was hearing. She thought Nift was a jerk, but he was reliable. And she'd been kind enough not to mention him in her exposé of unlikely pornographic video rental customers. She had mentioned to him that she had photographs of some of the customers arriving at and leaving the video rental stores. She hadn't mentioned that, though Nift was observed renting a DVD about drunken coeds on a horse farm, he wasn't in any of the photos. Let him assume.

“So what else do we know?” she asked.

Nift told her what they'd discerned from examination of the arm.

“A third victim,” Cindy said when he was finished. “And the killer's probably weighting down the body parts and hiding them underwater. The arm must have somehow broken loose from whatever was holding it down and floated to the surface.”

“You're jumping to conclusions,” Nift said.

“Hey, it's my job.” She was grinning. “Be sure to keep me posted.”

“I will,” Nift said and broke the connection.

Cindy knew he would.

 

Gloria turned off the narrow secondary road onto a mostly overgrown dirt road and drove until she came to a rickety wooden swing gate with a faded
NO TRESPASSING
sign nailed crookedly on it.

David climbed out of the big Chrysler and opened the gate, then waited until Gloria had driven through. He glanced around in the fading light, thinking they had about an hour until sundown, then closed the gate, fastened its rusty latch, and got back in the car.

They were on a farm in New Jersey, an hour's drive from the city. The farm was deserted and had been in the legal limbo of estate law for several years. There had once been a frame house with a detached garage, a barn, and another outbuilding for equipment and tools. The house and garage were deserted wrecks. Two walls of the outbuilding had collapsed, allowing the elements to lay rust over an old Ford tractor without an engine, and some shovels and other implements leaning against a remaining wall.

Gloria drove the car around behind the garage, popped the trunk lid, and sat for a few minutes watching tall, shadowed grass dance rhythmically in the breeze.

“Place is as deserted as the moon,” she said.

“Time for the astronauts to get to work,” David said beside her, then unclipped his seat belt and opened the door. (He would continue to think of himself as David until they were finished with their work here.)

He was always in a good enough mood if not downright cheerful, Gloria thought. Always optimistic, no matter the situation. No doubt that was part of his appeal to women.

They walked around to the open trunk.

The two of them carried four bulky black plastic trash bags down a grassy slope and about twenty feet into the woods. The bags contained the clothing and remains of Shellie Marston, except for her heart-shot torso, which they'd left next to a construction Dumpster on the Upper West Side.

They chose a spot in the darkening woods and laid down the bags. David returned to the car to get the shovels.

While he was gone, Gloria used the side of her foot to clear away last year's leaves. It took her four or five minutes. Satisfied, she scraped mud off her shoe, then tapped her back pocket to make sure her small leather-bound Bible was still there.

She heard a sound and looked over to see that, besides the shovels, David was coming back with a rusty, long-handled pickax he'd found somewhere. That would make digging a lot easier, as it hadn't rained in three or four days and the ground was hard. Gloria smiled.

God was easing their task.

Pearl exhaled, inhaled, and said, “God, that was good!”

It was apparently what Milton Kahn wanted to hear. He turned back toward her on her perspiration-soaked mattress and nuzzled his head between her breasts. Kissed her precisely there, then kissed both nipples. Pearl wasn't sure she was in love with this guy, but it wasn't bad having him around.

Milt was, in a way, a gift from Pearl's mother and her friend Mrs. Kahn at the Golden Sunset assisted-living apartments in Teaneck, a sort of arranged affair if not marriage. Mrs. Kahn was Milt's aunt. Under duress, Pearl had agreed to meet the elderly women and Milt for lunch in Golden Sunset's bleak dining room, and Pearl was surprised to find that she actually liked the guy. He was short, like she was, and good looking in a dark way, with a tiny imperial beard on the tip of his chin that tickled in the right places and made him look more like a magician or renowned psychiatrist than a struggling dermatologist.

Pearl discovered that he was a good conversationalist with a sense of humor, a funny guy for a dermatologist. After their second date, he'd removed some bumps from Pearl's neck. She'd somehow found that very intimate. To Pearl's mother's delight, the spark had struck and now there was flame if not a raging inferno. Flame was better than nothing. It was cold out there.

Pearl sat up and used both hands to smooth back her hair so she wouldn't look insane. She was aware of Milt watching her and smiling as she swiveled on the mattress. She felt his fingertips brush the curve of her right buttock.

“Got someplace to go?” he asked. He had a deep voice for a small man, husky. He wasn't husky himself, but lean and muscular. Tan, with a lot of dark hair on his chest. Some hair—maybe too much—on his back.

“The shower,” Pearl said. “Gotta get outta here.”

“You live here,” Milt reminded her.

“But I don't work here.”

He sighed. “Your job. Always your job.”

“You sound like a lot of cops' wives.”

“Sexist thing to say.”

“And husbands,” Pearl amended. She stood up and padded barefoot across the bedroom toward the bathroom.

“You know you're beautiful,” Milt said huskily behind her.

“Oh, sure.”

“And your job's okay with me except for the danger.”

“Well, if I could be chief of police I would be.”

“This Torso Murders case you're on, how do you know you won't become one of the killer's victims?”

She paused at the doorway and turned to face him. “That guy wants to stay as far away from me as possible, Milt.”

He was propped up on his elbows, grinning as he gave her an up-and-down glance. “Hard to believe.”

“That's not the only thing that's hard,” she said and continued her sleepy, sex-sated trek into the bathroom.

By the time she'd showered and dressed, her hair still glistening wet, he had toast, orange juice, and coffee waiting for her on the kitchen table. The toast was slightly burned, the way she liked it, and along with the freshly brewed coffee made the kitchen smell great. Milt was barefoot and bare chested, but he had his pants on and was actually wearing one of Pearl's old aprons that she'd received as a gift from her mother. Pearl thought she'd thrown the thing away, but here it was in her kitchen on a man she'd just had sex with. Good sex. She'd never seen Quinn wearing an apron and couldn't imagine it.

“Cops' wives,” Pearl said. “They're saints.”

“And cops' husbands,” Milt added, as he sat across from her at the table.

Domesticity, Pearl thought. It can't be beat. Until it beats you.

 

They were in Renz's office at One Police Plaza. It didn't look like a working cop's office because it wasn't. No clutter, no bulletin board with rosters and notices, no visible file cabinets. Harley Renz had risen way above all that and, like many before him, regarded the position of police commissioner as primarily political. Not surprising, as he'd gotten there more through politics than police work.

The office was carpeted in a deep maroon and had oak-paneled walls. Requisite trophy plaques, commendations, and photographs were arranged on the wall behind the desk. The desk itself was a vast slab of speckled dark granite. Whatever electronic equipment was in the room was concealed in a huge, many-doored oak hutch that almost perfectly matched the paneling. Two brown leather armchairs faced the desk. There was a small table with four chairs off to the side, for miniconferences, and what looked like an antique table with a cut-glass vase on it stuffed with colorful flowers.

Quinn guessed that fresh flowers were brought in every day. Harley Renz, bureaucratic climber, living the high life. Wanting to climb still higher. Quinn had heard that cockroaches did that, inexorably climbed upward in a building. He wondered what they did when they reached the roof.

Along with Quinn and his team, Helen the profiler was there. She was wearing a green blazer and gray slacks, with high heels that made her even taller than her six feet plus.

Pearl had on a lightweight navy blue business suit that made her features and hair appear darker. She looked vital and alive this morning, Quinn thought. Healthy and glowing in a way that was wholesome and beautiful. Health had a lot to do with sex appeal, Quinn was beginning to realize.

She caught him looking at her and he looked away. At the same time, he was sure she'd abruptly looked away from him.

Renz pulled a
City Beat
from somewhere below his desk and laid it on a granite corner. “Cindy Sellers is asking why the killer doesn't conceal the entire body. Why leave the untraceable torsos where they'll surely be found.”

“We've been wondering the same thing,” Quinn said.

Renz glanced over at Helen, who'd moved to stand in front of the office's window. It was her time to speak. It occurred to Quinn that she liked to stand in front of windows, maybe so she appeared in silhouette.

“That would be why I'm here,” Helen said in her Lauren Bacall voice. She even looked a little like a young Bacall, only much taller and more athletic. “The killer's actions suggest that the torsos are part of his ruling compulsion and megalomania. He has to brag about what he's done. He must make sure that someone knows a murder's been committed, and that he's gotten away with it.”

“By someone you mean the police?” Fedderman asked, from where he sat in an uncomfortable-looking chair near the table with the floral arrangement.

“Definitely. But the public, too. The torsos are his public souvenirs that he's sharing with them.”

“Generous,” Fedderman said.

Helen might have smiled. It was hard to know from her silhouette. “They're also a way of taunting the police and terrorizing the city.”

Quinn was long familiar with the games serial killers played, and he wasn't convinced. “Isn't it possible the killer makes sure his victims' remains are anonymous simply to hinder the investigation into their deaths?”

“Quinn's right. I can buy into that part,” Pearl said, before Helen could answer. “And to taunt us.” She shook her head. “The rest, the souvenir business, I'm not so sure. Some serial killers like to keep souvenirs of their victims—a lock of hair, that sort of thing—but they don't generally want to share them with the public or anyone else. They want to keep them where they can look at them from time to time, like all collectors.”

“True,” Helen said. “They like to relive their conquests. It gives them a feeling of power and importance.”

Quinn shifted in the soft leather chair nearest Renz's flight deck–sized desk and crossed his arms. “None of this is for sure.”

“Agreed,” Helen said. “Like you, I don't have much to work with.”

“We do know for sure he's one sick puppy,” Fedderman said.

“The stakes, or whatever he uses to penetrate his victims,” Pearl said.

“After they're dead,” Renz reminded them. He looked inquisitively at Helen. “Why
after
they're dead?”

“As of now, I don't know,” Helen said.

“A necrophiliac who can't get it up,” Fedderman suggested.

Helen shrugged. “Good a guess as any.”

Some profiler, Quinn thought. An honest one. “Truth is, this guy's got us operating pretty much in the dark.”

“We can deduce from that that he's smart,” Helen said sarcastically.

“Now you're cookin',” Renz said.

The poised silhouette that was Helen seemed unmoved by his return sarcasm.

Quinn wanted to stop them before a volley of sarcasm got going that might lead to a real argument.

The phone beat him to it. He hadn't even seen the phone; it was concealed in a sunken alcove on the far side of the desk. It had a soft, controlled ring that wasn't a ring at all. It sounded more like a repetitive, soothing note of a violin about to begin a gentle melody.

As Renz lifted a dark plastic receiver that matched the desk, he looked annoyed that they should be disturbed. Almost immediately, his expression became serious. “Yes. Yes,” he said. He produced a notepad from the sunken alcove. “Christ!” he said, looking in turn at everyone in the office. He might have been identifying the caller, judging by the somber, dazed expression on his bloodhound features.

He switched the phone to his left hand so he could write on the notepad. He kept saying yes intermittently while scribbling with his pen. Finally, he thanked the caller and hung up.

He sat for a minute running his fingertips along the loose flesh of his sagging cheeks. It stretched the skin around his eyes downward and made him look even more like some upright breed of hound.

“We've got us another torso,” he said. “Found alongside a Dumpster on the Upper West Side.”

“Maybe a match for our arm,” Fedderman said.

Renz shook his head no. “This one's too fresh. Killed within the last few days.”

Pearl, who'd been leaning back so only her chair's back legs were on the floor, realized the import of Renz's words. She sat forward so the chair's front legs made a soft thump on the thick pile carpet.

“Victim number four,” she said.

Renz was staring down at the folded
City Beat
on his desk. “I guess I oughta call Cindy Sellers.” He looked at Quinn as if for help. “The woman's become one big pain in the ass.”

Quinn shrugged. “You're the one who made the deal with the devil.”

“I do it all the time,” Renz said. “Usually it works out okay.”

He shoved his notepad forward so Quinn could copy the information on his own.

“I need you to find this bastard, Quinn.”

Quinn didn't think that required a reply and kept on silently writing.

They left Renz in his office to go to the West Side address where the torso had been found. Left him in the suddenly smaller room with his plaques and commendations and ego-inflating framed photographs.

Right now, it wasn't a comfortable place for him.