Serial (24 page)

Edmundsville, 2008

Beth’s recommendation had worked. Link Evans was hired at Arch Manufacturing. He worked for a while on the line, but it didn’t take long for his bosses to see he had more to offer. As soon as seniority allowed an opening, he was promoted to forklift driver. Beth liked that. Link wasn’t so tired when he got home, and he could spend more time with Eddie.

There was no doubt in her mind that Link loved Eddie. They’d play catch sometimes in the evenings until Eddie got tired of throwing the ball. Link was convinced Eddie had baseball talent. Maybe he was right. Beth was no judge.

As Eddie got older, he hadn’t filled out physically in the way Link expected. He remained a spindly kid. Though he could still play ball well, his real talent seemed to be in scholastics. Eddie had been a whiz in Edmundsville primary school, with grades at the top of his class. Not only that, he was an amiable kid well liked by teachers and his fellow students.

High school was only slightly more difficult for Eddie.

That was all fine with Link. He bragged on Eddie’s grades. It was obvious that Eddie was going to be more of an intellect than an athlete. Not that he and Eddie didn’t still play catch.

In fact, they played catch even more often than when Eddie was younger.

There was something about these relentless games of catch, Beth thought. It was simply tossing a sphere back and forth, yet it forged a bond between father and son that a woman might not understand. Beth didn’t, quite. It might have something to do with giving and receiving, and then giving back. Beth wondered, had men played catch with their sons through the ages? Had primitive men and their sons tossed stones back and forth?

She bet they did.

Men were still a puzzle to Beth.

“Don’t you guys ever get tired?” she asked one night, from the wooden Adirondack chair they’d bought and Link and Eddie had painted.

Plop!
Went the baseball into Eddie’s glove. Eddie grinned and fired it back.
Plop!

“Tired of what?” Link asked. He’d put on a few pounds while working and eating regularly, but he was still a lean man, and athletic.

“You know. Playing catch.”

“No, it’s natural.” Talking to her had made Link glance over and drop the next pitch from Eddie. He bent low to pick up the ball and tossed it back sidearm and hard.

Plop!

“Natural, Mom!” Eddie said, with a touch of braggadocio.

Beth sat back with her eyes closed, sipped lemonade, and listened to the rhythm of summer and growing up. Hers was, she decided, a good life to be living.

Except for… small things now and then.

Plop!

Well, maybe the same small thing. It was something she hadn’t yet let crystallize into an actual suspicion. Her mind still danced around it, and only at odd times when the notion caught her off guard. Sometimes it was because of a certain light, or a certain angle, or a manner of speaking.

Acquired
, Beth thought.
It all could be acquired.

But not the angle of nose, the eyebrows, and the dark eyes.

Imagination?

Beth didn’t know what to think, what she’d do if she opened the gates and let the suspicion take root. Let it become serious.

The lazy rhythm of the ball zipping from one glove to the other momentarily ceased—a break in the order of the universe—and then continued. Somebody had dropped one.

It had been years, another world, and she’d caught only a fleeting glimpse of her attacker. But people’s looks could change over time, especially when they gained or lost a lot of weight. Link
was
about the right age. And the rape had occurred at night. She’d seen her rapist only by moonlight.

But it was true—at least she sometimes told (admitted to?) herself—that with more weight, and with a full and darker beard, Link might fit Vincent Salas’s description.

Beth tried, as she too often did these days, to recall the glimpses she’d had of her attacker so long ago, reimagining over and over the bulk of his body, the quick movement of an arm and hand to snare her wrist and pin it to the ground, the line of his bearded cheek as he raised his head to glance around, the quick white glint of an eye in moonlight.

Crazy!

Beth bent her thoughts in other directions. She should be immensely pleased that Link and Eddie got along so well. Link was a wonderful, loving, and attentive father. And husband.

He’d gotten Eddie interested in something beyond baseball and fishing—coin collecting. Link had become something of a serious coin collector, well beyond the stage of wheat pennies and coins with silver content. He’d even begun attending conventions, and after each such gathering of serious collectors, he would return with coins he’d bought (as an investment), and some old coin or other for Eddie. Eddie had a growing collection of his own.

Coins. Eddie and Link would sit for hours arranging and talking about their collections, what Link seemed to see as the romance of rare coins. Beth saw rare coins merely as something else to foster even stronger bonding between Eddie and Link. A bonding and a closeness that threatened to block out Beth.

Is that what I’m worried about? That I’ll be odd woman out?

She actually laughed out loud, half amused and half ashamed of herself.

“Something funny?” Link yelled from where he stood in front of the wire fence in case the ball got past him.

“Me,” Beth said. She smiled. “Nothing you two guys’d be interested in.”

She closed her eyes, sipped more lemonade, and listened to the ball slapping into the oiled leather gloves, back and forth, two-way catch.

Exclusively.

New York, the present

Verna Pound had spent all her money in a deli. She’d had only enough for junk food displayed in the racks, and she tried to stretch it as far as possible. The dark-skinned woman behind the counter—maybe Indian or Middle Eastern—didn’t even bother with the extra three cents Verna owed her for the day-old cupcakes and apple turnover. She wanted Verna out of the deli as soon as possible. Not after making a big scene. Just out. Verna’s presence was bad for business.

On the way out, Verna used her body to conceal that she was stealing a plastic bottle of water. The dark-skinned woman might have said something behind her, but Verna didn’t stop to find out. There was a certain cost to doing business in some Manhattan neighborhoods. Besides, water shouldn’t be something a person had to steal.

Back out on the sidewalk, lugging the white plastic bag of what for her would be one of her better meals all week, she made her way toward Ben’s for Men’s. It was a low-tomedium-priced men’s clothing store with an entrance that was a dog-legged tunnel of display windows full of suits, coats, and various other men’s apparel. The shop was closed until tomorrow, so the windows were dark, but the deep and concealing shadowed tunnel was accessible. The recessed entranceway was one of the few places in the neighborhood where Verna could feel almost completely safe and relax.

Even though it was dusk and still fairly early, Verna was exhausted. But then, that was her usual state. She waited until no one seemed to be looking, then shuffled into the show-window tunnel, going in as far as she could but at the same time being careful not to touch the shop’s glass door. There would almost certainly be an alarm system.

Verna lowered her aching body and sat with her back against the brick surface beneath the display windows. She let out a long sigh, wondering if other people ever got this tired. The way she lived must be whittling away at her life, making her old though she was still in her thirties.

Someday…

No, Verna cautioned herself. Someday was today, and tomorrow didn’t look any brighter. Hope could be cruel. In her circumstances, it was better not to let hope through the door. If hope wanted to hang around outside and taunt her, let it. She knew that you couldn’t trust hope.

Hungry as well as tired, she wolfed down one of the chocolate cupcakes and gulped some water.

One of the shadows toward the front of the entranceway moved, startling her. It might have been simply someone walking past, back-lit by the faint glow from the street.

But she knew that wasn’t true. She was beyond the crook in the zigzag glass panels.

The shadow moved again, and a man appeared.

From where Verna was sprawled propped against the bricks beneath the glass and a display of blazers, he appeared tall. He was wearing dark clothing, probably black. A light jacket, even though the evening was warm. He was carrying a gym bag.

He obviously expected to find her there. Must have followed her and watched her enter beneath the Ben’s sign. Then he’d waited for the right moment to come to her. It was almost completely dark now, time for the monsters to come out and play.

Verna didn’t move but kept her eyes trained on the man. She didn’t think she knew him. He wasn’t one of the neighborhood street people.

Or
did
she know him? He did look vaguely familiar.

He stooped beside her and placed the gym bag nearby. He smiled at her, then unzipped the bag and reached inside. She saw no fingernails and realized he was wearing flesh-colored rubber gloves.

When his hand came out of the bag, it was holding a knife with a kind of blade she’d never seen before. It was short and curved, and looked sharp and wicked.

Verna knew that if she tried to scream she’d be dead or unconscious within seconds. She was too tired to scream, anyway. Too tired to resist.

“You know who I am?” the man asked, placing her plastic water bottle aside carefully so it was a safe distance away and wouldn’t spill.

“I read the papers,” Verna said, “even if they’re a few days old. I know who you are.”

He reached into the bag again. “I’m going to put some tape over your mouth,” he said. “It’s a precaution. Try not to be afraid.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m not going to scream.”

Very quickly, using both hands yet somehow not nicking her with the knife, he applied the tape. When she raised a hand to peel it off, he grabbed her wrist, then taped both wrists together. He ran a long strand of tape around her waist and arms so she couldn’t raise her hands high enough to touch her lips. Her right leg moved reflexively to kick him, but he merely intercepted the feeble effort and pressed her knee to the tiles.

“You’re going to scream,” he told her. “But this way it won’t be out loud.” He mashed her knee hard against the concrete, sapping the strength out of her leg. Then he grinned. “By the way, it’s okay to be afraid now.”

Verna bowed her head and closed her eyes. This man didn’t know she was beyond certain kinds of fear. Over the past few years she’d learned to endure. That was her strength, to let whatever was going to happen simply roll over her and happen. Afterward she would assess the damage. Whatever was left of her soul and body, she would drag from the scene after the madness had passed.

And if there was to be no afterward… that would be a mercy.

The sharp smell of ammonia jolted her so her eyes flew open. She gagged and choked, her body heaving as the rectangle of duct tape blocked her screams. Her coughing seared her throat and made sounds like a dog trying and failing to bark. The man’s powerful hands held her still until the coughing stopped. She could handle this, she told herself. If only she kept calm, she could endure it and then it would be over. She concentrated and forced herself to breathe evenly through her nose. The sharp ammonia scent was still in the air, nauseating her.

The man gazed down at her as if he pitied her. He was so calm and looked so kind. He might have been an angel here to rescue her from everything her world had become. He
was
that, she told herself.

You might not know it, but you are my salvation.

Then she remembered. It had been a long time ago, in her muddled mind, but she remembered. This was the man who’d wanted to talk to her. By the church.

I know you! The cop! You’re the one who gave me the five dollars. You helped me!

Kindness meant a chance. If nothing else, a less painful passage into death.

She tried to beg with her eyes, feeling like a bad silent-film actress but not caring. Hope was stronger than she’d thought. Stronger than she was.

He wasn’t a cop—that was for sure. Still, he’d given her the five dollars….

“It isn’t going to be easy for you,” he said.

Very methodically, he sliced away her clothes and then taped her legs tightly together.

You’re a friend! You helped me! Help me! Help me!

His betrayal was of a magnitude that crushed her.

Verna understood that she was not beyond pain.

She did somehow manage to hold panic at bay. The kind of mindlessness that would turn her into something less than human. She kept repeating to herself that this would pass. She tried to beg for mercy through the tape but couldn’t make more than a low humming sound, over and over.

“That’s my favorite tune,” the man said, as he used the knife on her.

At first he bent to his task casually, but his concentration grew and the blade bit deeper and deeper and established a repetitive rhythm.

She noticed through the pain and horror that gripped and gripped and gripped her that he’d somehow found the time to light a cigarette.

Quinn had phoned Pearl and given him the address. She was driving the unmarked and arrived at the crime scene ahead of him.

The first thing she saw as she pulled the car to the curb was that the sidewalk on the right side of the street was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. There was a big uniformed cop standing beneath the
BEN’S FOR MEN’S
sign, his arms crossed, his head cocked to the side, appearing as if he were contemplating trading in his uniform for the sharp-looking suit displayed beside him in the window.

Pearl parked the car behind an NYPD cruiser, got out into the sun-drenched heat, and ducked beneath the tape.

When the uniform forgot about the suit and came toward her, she flashed her ID. He stepped back into the meager shade and motioned with his arm.

Pearl entered the dogleg tunnel of clothing display windows and heard echoing voices. The maze of glass seemed remote from the rest of the city and smelled musty. There was another smell Pearl recognized and could almost taste. Death assaulted all the senses.

The tech team was at work in its busy and concentrated fashion. Dr. Julius Nift, the obnoxious little ME, was crouched beside a woman’s body like a lascivious troll. His black leather medical case was open beside him.

Nift looked up at Pearl’s approach and nodded. “Our killer’s going downscale.”

Pearl looked at what was left of a thin, raggedly dressed woman. Obviously a street person. A rectangle of gray duct tape dangled from one corner of her gaping, blood-clogged mouth.

“The job’s fun sometimes, isn’t it?” Nift said. He removed something silver and sharp from his medical case and began poking and probing.

“You touch the tape?” Pearl asked.

“Of course not. I left it for the real inspectors so they could make brilliant deductions.” He used a tweezers-like instrument to lift a shred of severed flesh from the victim’s abdomen and peered beneath it. “Yuk,” he said in a flat voice.

“Is this finally a female corpse that holds no sexual appeal for you?” Pearl asked Nift. In the corner of her vision she saw a tech’s head turn toward her in surprise.

Nift merely smiled, smug in his insensitivity. “Oh, I dunno. Maybe when I clean her up.”

“You’re an asshole,” Pearl said.

Nift shrugged. “You asked.”

Quinn had arrived and caught the last of the conversation. His bulk seemed to fill the confined space. “I don’t want to know the question,” he said, with a warning look at Pearl. The big uniformed cop had come into the display tunnel a few steps behind Quinn and stood stone-faced. He looked as if his nose had been broken almost as many times as Quinn’s.

“She died last night around nine to midnight,” Nift said, happy to change the subject now that Quinn was here. “I’ll give you a closer estimate sometime today.”

Quinn stooped near the body for a closer look.

“Ugly,” he said.

“I was just remarking on that,” Nift said.

“Tortured like the others. Same kind of knife cuts and cigarette burns.”

“Same kind of wounds, same kind of knife,” Nift said. “Short, sharply curved blade, very well honed.”

“But not surgical?”

“Not like any surgical instrument I’ve seen. For detail work, though, I would say.” He grinned. “Like for carving on models. Big models.”

“The tape on her mouth was like that when the body was found by the sales clerk who came in to open the store,” the uniform said. “I made sure nobody touched it till the CSU and ME got here.”

Pearl looked beyond him and saw another uniformed cop standing near the bend in the display windows. A redheaded guy in a cheap suit, whom Pearl recognized as a police photographer, was making his way toward them. Murder was a magnet. The troops had arrived in full force.

“Her tongue…” Quinn said, staring at the gaping bloody hole that was left of a human mouth.

“It’s been removed,” Nift said. “I think very deftly. I’ll have to clean her out to be certain of that. And unless she’s lying on it, the killer left with the tongue.”

“He would,” Quinn said. He carefully checked the victim for identification. There was nothing. Not even a scrap of paper in the pockets of the threadbare clothing. He looked at the victim’s tangled, bloody hair and figured it had been tangled even before she was killed. There was dirt beneath her jagged fingernails, but no sign that she’d resisted her attacker.

“She have a purse?”

“Not when we got here,” the bent-nosed cop said.

“Just another street woman,” Nift said, watching Quinn across the dead woman.

“I want her printed as soon as possible,” Quinn said, standing up. Feeling it in his legs

“My God!” a man’s voice said behind Quinn.

He turned to see a slender, handsome man with spiky blond hair and round-framed glasses. He was wearing a spiffy cream-colored suit that reminded Quinn the inveterate theater buff of Sporting Life in
Porgy and Bess
.

The reed-thin man was at least three inches taller than Quinn and wearing some kind of cologne giving off a scent that didn’t mix well with the coppery smell of old blood.

“The officer told me I could come back here,” he said. “I’m Ben. You know, of Ben’s for Men’s. Ben Blevin.” He held out his hand and Quinn shook it, noting that the reedy Ben was surprisingly strong.

Quinn thought about going inside the store with Ben and questioning the clerk who’d discovered the body, but that would mean leaving Pearl with Nift, along with a lot of other people who wouldn’t intimidate Pearl in the slightest. He glanced at his watch. Mishkin was looking after Weaver in the hospital, but Quinn knew that Fedderman and Sal Vitali would be here soon.

“Let’s go inside the store,” Quinn said to Ben. “I want to talk to your clerk.”

As Ben led the way into the store, Quinn glanced back at Pearl with what she recognized as his
Behave Yourself
look.

Pearl would try.