John Lutz Bundle (47 page)

Manhattan was like a kiln that had been shut down, but only temporarily and not for long. It was another morning already uncomfortably warm because of yesterday’s heat still permeating the city’s miles of concrete. Day after day, the heat built pressure. Off in the distance a siren wailed, bemoaning the meteorological injustice of it all.

“There was never much doubt he was jerking our strings,” Harley Renz said. “We just didn’t know how hard and how many strings.”

They were in Renz’s office at One Police Plaza, where it was at least cooler than outside. The office was small and looked as if it had been decorated by Eliot Ness. An old Thompson submachine gun was displayed in a glass-fronted case on the wall behind Renz’s desk. Also on the wall were framed certificates and awards Renz had accumulated through wile or war; a photo of him shaking hands with the mayor; another, older, photo of the two of them on a dais in a similar situation. In that one the younger, less saggy-faced Renz was holding up his right hand as if about to inhale from a cigarette he was smoking, only the cigarette had been airbrushed from the photo, leaving Renz looking like he was signaling someone somewhere that the number was two.

Quinn, seated between Pearl and Fedderman before Renz’s wide desk, glanced around and noted that everything in the office was either functional or laudatory, no doubt exactly the impression Renz wanted to project. Quinn recalled that he’d never been here when there wasn’t an open file with some fanned papers on Renz’s desk, as if he’d just been interrupted while pondering a case. This time maybe he really had been pondering, because the file was the autopsy report on Florence Norton.

“The killer must have gone to a lot of trouble to find a victim who shared Quinn’s birth date,” Pearl said. Renz was important enough to have an office with a window; light shone through the blinds and illuminated her black hair as if it were a raven’s wing.

Renz said, “Our guy’s resourceful, like you people are gonna have to be in order to catch him.”

Pearl didn’t figure there had to be a reply to that.

“Did the lab find anything he left behind on this one?” Quinn asked. He noticed something new on Renz’s desk, a small silver picture frame propped at an angle to face the chair where Renz sat. Quinn knew Renz was unmarried and had no children. He wondered who or what was in the photo, or whatever the silver frame contained. Maybe a romantic interest.

Renz swiveled a few inches this way and that in the brown leather chair while he shook is head no. “Forensics has got nothing to work with. Nothing left behind but death. Our sicko is pathologically neat.” He stopped swiveling and leaned forward in his chair; fitted small, rimless reading glasses onto his nose; and surveyed the Florence Norton file’s contents. “Postmortem indicates this one died by drowning, like the others. Sucked in almost half her bathwater. She was dismembered by a knife or knives, a hatchet or cleaver, and the same or a similar saw used to sever those joints too resistant for smaller cutting instruments.”

“Power saw?” Fedderman asked.

Renz nodded without looking up. The reading glasses picked up the light from the window and made him appear owlish and scholarly. “Same as with the other victims. Kind of saw you’d buy at Home Depot to build your deck.”

“Ah,” Fedderman said. Pearl couldn’t imagine Fedderman building a deck without cutting off at least a finger.

“The cleanser found on Florence’s body parts,” Renz continued, “was Whoosh, a common dishwasher detergent. The empty plastic container was found on the floor behind the commode. A bottle of carpet cleaner, also empty, and devoid of prints like the Whoosh squeeze bottle, was lying on its side in the hall outside the bathroom. An empty bleach container was in the kitchen, its cap in the sink. Apparently all three cleansers and purifiers were used, the dishwasher detergent last. Our neatnik makes do with whatever’s at hand.”

“All these containers wiped?” Quinn asked.

“Signs of wiping. Also signs that the killer wore rubber or latex gloves.”

“Consistent with the other crime scenes,” Pearl said.

“What else is consistent,” Renz said, removing his reading glasses and tucking them in his shirt pocket, “is that we’ve got nothing to work with.”

“We can be pretty sure he’ll be looking for another
N
victim,” Fedderman said. As usual, one of his white shirt cuffs was unbuttoned and dangling, the shirt’s arm too long for his coat sleeve. Fedderman unconsciously buttoned it as he spoke. It came immediately unbuttoned.

“Which leaves us with a question,” Renz said. “How much should we tell the media?”

“What they’re going to find out anyway,” Quinn said, “which is everything. The more information that’s out there, the more it’s liable to shake something loose.”

“And we have an obligation,” Pearl said.

“Obligation?” Renz seemed puzzled as if by some foreign term.

“To warn dark-haired women with last-initial
N
s that they’re in particular danger.”

“Don’t they already know that?” Renz asked.

“Not all of them. And not how much danger.”

Renz looked inquisitively at Quinn. The sun glanced off his glasses again, giving him the same owlish expression.

“Pearl’s right,” Quinn said. “We’ve got an obligation to warn them. This psycho finishes what he starts, and he’s going to finish spelling out my name.”

“We’ve gotta make damned sure they’re warned.” Pearl pressing her point. Maybe too hard, judging by the expression on Renz’s face. She knew she had the reputation of getting too passionate about her cases, sometimes losing her cool. She glanced at Fedderman for support.

“Sure,” he said daringly.

“It’s the politically smart thing to do,” Quinn said, coming to Pearl’s rescue, “as well as the right thing. That combination happens seldom enough you oughta take advantage of it, Harley.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” Renz said. “I’ll issue a press release making it clear that the Butcher’s next victim will likely be a brunette between twenty and fifty with a surname beginning with
N.”

Pearl smiled, pleased. If most New York women hadn’t already heard or caught on, by this time tomorrow they’d be in the know. Brunettes all over the city would be going blond.

“What about the birth date?” Fedderman asked.

“Let’s not mention it,” Renz said. “There’s no guarantee the killer will use it again, and it might cause women not born on Quinn’s birthday to be complacent.”

Everyone agreed that made sense.

As they stood to leave Renz’s office, Quinn made a thing of maneuvering his chair back into some kind of alignment. It enabled him to sneak a look at who or whatever was in the silver frame on Renz’s desk.

It was Renz.

No cell phone vibrator had been found among Florence Norton’s possessions, but Pearl was bored, so she figured why not?

It might not be a bad idea to return to Nuts and Bolts this evening. The lounge was, after all, the one thing other than last initials that seemed to connect at least two of the killer’s victims.

As Pearl had suspected, the place looked better when open for business, illuminated and full of customers. The soft lighting from the rows of dim crystal chandeliers helped obscure imperfections in the ambience and the patrons. And there was music. The background kind. A woman was diddling melodically and faintly on a piano that Pearl hadn’t noticed on her previous visit, seemingly letting her imagination prompt her fingers over the keys without any planning whatsoever, somehow making it work to create a pleasant, restful mood.

Most of the tables were occupied, and all but a few of the stools at the bar. Behind the bar stood Victoria, looking much more beautiful in the flattering light, wearing a paisley blouse that allowed for some cleavage. Her highly piled hair didn’t look so structured now, and her dark bangs were parted in the middle and pushed to the side, making her overly made-up eyes seem larger.

Pearl walked over and stood alongside an empty stool, near where a white towel was spread out on the bar. It was where the servers bustled over to pick up the drinks Victoria concocted.

“Busy place,” Pearl said, when Victoria noticed her and moved to stand by her.

Victoria smiled. “We do a lively business, despite Sinclair’s bitching.”

“Bitching is what bosses do,” Pearl said, one working girl to another.

“Mostly. Get you something? Or are you on duty?”

“Yes and no. I’ll have a Bud Light.”

“Beer drinker, huh?”

“You know it,” Pearl said. “Beer and doughnuts. All part of being a cop.”

Victoria drew the beer from a tap and placed the glass in front of Pearl on a coaster on the bar. “I don’t believe in stereotypes.”

“Me, either,” Pearl said. She glanced around. “Most of your customers are women, well dressed, respectable looking. Same way the men. Thirties and forties, mostly. Old enough to have good sense while having a good time. At least you’d think it by looking at them. But it’s surprising what they can be up to.”

“You would know, being a cop.” Victoria forgetting all about her stereotype ban.

She excused herself and moved down the bar away from Pearl to wait on a man and woman who’d just come in. They both ordered what looked like martinis. The woman sampled hers and smiled. Pearl took the time to listen to the music. The woman at the piano was still playing nothing Pearl could identify, and she was reasonably sure the music was impromptu. Still, it was mesmerizing. It always amazed her how in New York there was so much talent to be found in unexpected places.

When Victoria returned, she said, “Most of our customers are single, or pretending to be. If they come in alone, connections are sometimes made. That’s one reason we’re in business.”

“God bless connections,” Pearl said, lifting her frosted glass in a toast before sipping draft beer that felt icy and good going down.

“Amen,” Victoria said. “The ones who stay late, they’re the ones most likely to be troublesome.”

“Late and alone?”

Victoria seemed to think about that. “Yeah, maybe pissed off because they’re not gonna get laid.”

Pearl lifted her glass again. “God bless getting laid.”

“I like to think He does,” Victoria said.

A man on the good side of forty edged up to the bar, almost pressing against Pearl. She could feel the vibrancy of his presence, smell his cologne or aftershave. She looked at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar—regular features, average size and build, well groomed, tailored blue suit with white shirt and nondescript tie. Not much for a woman to complain about. Not on the surface, anyway.

Their eyes met in the mirror and he smiled at her—nice smile—then turned his attention to Victoria and held out something gold. Pearl diverted her gaze from the mirror and looked at the object. A cigarette lighter, knife-thin and expensive looking.

“I found this wedged down behind a seat cushion,” the man said. “Somebody must have lost it.”

“There’s no smoking in here,” Victoria said.

“I know, but I figured somebody might want this back anyway.”

Victoria accepted the lighter. “I’ll put it on a shelf where it can be seen. Maybe somebody’ll claim it. Nobody does, you can have it.”

“I don’t smoke,” the man said. He pushed back away from the bar. As an afterthought, he turned and said, “Thanks.”

“You’re the good Samaritan,” Victoria said. When the man was gone, she grinned at Pearl. “You shoulda spoke up. You could’ve had a nice lighter.”

“At least,” Pearl said.

Victoria laughed. It was a loud laugh that held nothing back.

“But I don’t smoke, either,” Pearl said. “Do you?”

“Secretly. Like a lotta people.” She winked at Pearl. “Cops are secretive about some things, right?”

“Meaning why am I here?”

“I guess so.”

“I wanted to see what kind of place two of the victims spent time in,” Pearl said, “so it might give me more of an idea of the kind of women they were.”

“Can I ask if you’re married,” Victoria said, “or if you’ve got a special someone?”

“Yes, you can ask. I won’t be secretive. Answers are no and no.”

“Then you should understand. We just get your average career woman in here. They’re from the office buildings in the neighborhood. Average working guys, too. White-collar drones. Tired from a long day at the office, needing a drink, maybe some understanding the wife doesn’t give them. I guess what I’m saying is, there’s probably not much you can learn about those two victims here, other than that they led more or less average lives.”

Pearl knew about
average
lives. “Sure, and they happened to stop in at Nuts and Bolts.”

“And probably some other places around here.”

“And bought Dial In cell phones from you.”

“Yes, they did. How many grown-up women do you know who don’t have a vibrator?”

“We’re back to that secretive thing again,” Pearl said.

Victoria emitted another loud laugh. The place seemed to be getting more crowded, more alive with conversation. The piano was louder and playing something identifiable. “Night and Day.” One of Pearl’s favorites. She wouldn’t have minded sitting for a while and listening, but she knew she shouldn’t. And Victoria was right, there was probably nothing to be learned here. It was simply another Manhattan nightspot, someplace she and Quinn might have frequented when they were together.