Twist (20 page)

Q
uinn sat at his desk, his chair eased over so there was a direct breeze on him from the air conditioner, and worked the landline phone. The struggling window unit was picking up a scent from out on the street, sweet, occasionally cloying. Probably some overripe trash that hadn’t yet been collected by the city. Garbage and commerce. New York.

He couldn’t reach Vernon Casey at either his home or work number. He assumed the work number was a cell phone.

He tried the home number again, and this time a woman answered.

“I’m trying to get in touch with Vernon Casey, the auctioneer,” Quinn said, after the woman had said hello.

“You’ve gotten in touch with his wife,” the woman said. “I can give you his work number.”

“I tried there and got voice mail.”

“What’s this about? If it’s business, I should be able to help you whether you’re wanting to buy or to sell. Been working in those capacities for Vernon for years.”

“Neither,” Quinn said. “I’m a detective in New York, and some information was given to me by Harlan Wilcoxen.”

There was a long silence.

“New York?”

“The one on the Hudson.”

“Where everything’s expensive.”

Quinn smiled. “Do you or your husband, Vernon, know Harlan?” He thought it best to proceed on a first-name basis.

“ ’Course we do. Have for years. I’m Wanda, incidentally. I ain’t seen Harlan Wilcoxen in a coon’s age. How is he?”

“How well did you know him, Wanda?”

“I don’t much like that question, nor the tense nor tone you asked it in. Has something happened to Harlan?”

“I’m afraid so. He—”

“Hold up,” Wanda Casey said. She sounded apprehensive. “Jus’ hold up, please. I’m gonna let you converse with my husband.”

Quinn listened to them talking in the background but couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was the sound of movement, of paper rattling.

A deep male voice said, “I’m Vernon Casey, Detective . . . Quinn, is it?”

“It is,” Quinn said.

“You with the NYPD?”

“Yes.” The short answer.

“Now what’s this about Harlan?”

Quinn told him.

Vernon Casey didn’t say anything for a while, then said, “Lord almighty!”

“How well did you know Harlan?” Quinn asked.

“Well enough. He was a U.S. marshal where we lived in Bland County some years back. Pretty much the law there. If you knew Harlan, then you know what I mean. Haven’t seen him in years.”

“What about Mildred Gant or her son, Dred?”

“Now them I recall real well. Dred never said much. Acted kinda withdrawn. Smart as a whip, though, you could tell.”

“So how did you know Mildred?”

“She bought and sold antiques. Got real good at it, too. Made some money ’cause she was no dummy. She knew real antiques from the merely collectible or plain junk. Real aggressive bidder. I liked that about her, but that was the only thing I liked.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She didn’t treat her boy real well. He had bruises sometimes that came from more than falling off his bicycle. I wasn’t the only one that thought that. Marshal Wilcoxen did, too. But he couldn’t do a thing about it without proof. And most everybody knew Mildred wasn’t the sort who’d leave proof lying around. Harlan didn’t like doing nothing about it, but that was all he could do—nothing. Nobody else would help. Wasn’t nobody in the county wanted to lock horns with Mildred Gant. She’s a real spitfire. Last I heard, she was in prison. That in New York?”

“Chillicothe,” Quinn said. “She cheated some people having to do with antiques, then ran over a state trooper and damn near killed him.”

“Yeah, we heard about that. Antiquers talk amongst themselves. She was bold as brass when it came to going after a piece she really wanted. Say . . . you said
was
. She ain’t—”

“She is,” Quinn said. “She hanged herself in her cell.” He didn’t explain how.

“Now ain’t that something!” Casey seemed astounded. ‘Maybe the estate’ll finally auction off that old house and all the junk inside it.”

“Old house?”

“Mildred’s house. Over in Bland County. Nothing in it’s worth much, and the house itself is rundown, partly because of weather and lack of care, and because people been sneaking in and out of it for well over a decade now.”

“Trespassing?”

“You betcha! They figure it’s worth the risk. Place has been trampled inside and out, some of the walls knocked clear in to studwork, holes dug all over the yard. Time passes, and just when you think folks have forgotten, somebody shows up with a shovel or a pickaxe and starts searching again.”

“Searching for the lottery money?”

“So you know about that.”

“Sure,” Quinn said.
But I can always learn more.

“You betcha, that’s what they’re searching for. I think they’re wasting their time. If they knew Mildred they’d believe she could spend and gamble away all that money in the short time before she went to trial. Any gambling addict would tell you that. She wasn’t used to having so much money, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She could squeeze dimes till they bled, but paper money was for burning.”

“So she was a compulsive gambler.”

“Yep. That’s the reason she bought all those lottery tickets. Won all that money weeks afore she went to prison. Just in time to spend big on legal expenses. Hell, being Mildred, she’d hurry to spend it all afore she had to start doing time.”

“Was she always a risk taker?”

“Long as I knew her. Horses, fights, cards, slots, wherever she could place any kinda bet, she laid it down. Spent a fair amount of time in Vegas, I know.”

“I thought you said she was smart.”

“Smart’s got nothing to do with gambling. For somebody like Mildred, it was a sickness. She had to keep at it even though the odds were against her. She thought she was special and that somehow she’d win. She always thought she could quit at the right time, only there was never a right time, and there was never gonna be.”

Quinn decided it might be best not to identify Dred to Vernon Casey as a suspected serial killer, but he wanted to probe to see what Vernon knew.

“What about her son, Dred? Did he ever look for the money?”

“I doubt that. Hell, he was just a teenage kid at the time. Said about three words a year. Real withdrawn. Wrapped up in his own little world. And I can’t see Mildred telling him about the money. She wasn’t one to share. Also, ’bout the time of the trial, he was hustled outta the area and put in a foster home. Heard he ran away after a week.”

“You don’t think he came back here to look for the money.”

“Oh, I’m sure he would’ve if he’d known about it. My guess is he headed east, your territory, maybe. Dred was a bright enough kid to get the hell away from here or anyplace else that reminded him of Mildred. Rumor was he got sort of adopted by this truck driver, put some money Dred’s way, got him an education. A kid like Dred, he could do the rest. Scholarships and such. I heard he’s in the antique business somewhere in the Northeast, but it’s real money antiques, not weather vanes, depression glass, and pie safes. Fancy European stuff, art. Well, I say more power to the kid. He rose up outta the ashes and more power to him.”

“Would you know anyone who might be able to locate him?”

“No, no. Like I said, we don’t travel in the same circles. I never even dreamed I was in Sotheby’s.”

Maybe Dred hadn’t either. Maybe he dealt with a different set of buyers who didn’t mind if all of their collection was illegally obtained.

“Anything else you might tell me about Mildred Gant?” Quinn asked Vernon Casey.

“We talking fact or rumor?”

“Either one. We’re not in court.”

“Rumor, is all. For what it’s worth.”

“Pretend we’re chatting over the back fence,” Quinn said.

“Well, years back, something mighty bad happened to Marshall Wilcoxen’s daughter-in-law that was married to his son, Billy.”

“What might that have to do with Mildred Gant?”

“Maybe nothing. The daughter in law was pregnant with her and Billy Wilcoxen’s baby. Then she got murdered and the baby took from her womb before its time, but when it was alive. Somebody killed that poor woman and sliced her right open, probably afore she was all the way dead. The law never did find the killer, nor the baby. A while later, still in his grieving, Billy Wilcoxen ran his car at high speed into a concrete bridge abutment, died instantly. It wasn’t no accident, though it was recorded as such in state records.”

“So what might Mildred have to do with all that?” Quinn asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it.

“Rumor was that about the same time all this was going on with Billy Wilcoxen and his wife and baby, Mildred went and gave birth. She was a heavyset woman to begin with, and people didn’t see her all that often, so it was plenty possible. I mean, the times work out with what happened to the Wilcoxen baby, and all. But that could be coincidental.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m like everybody else. I don’t know what to think. People talked and talked about it for a while, then the talk died down.”

“So who was the father?”

“Of Dred? Mildred’s baby? There was speculation, is all. Birth certificate said father unknown. And for sure, nobody with a pecker walked up and claimed the kid.”

“Dred would be about the missing Wilcoxen baby’s age,” Quinn said.

Vernon Casey said, “Exactly his age.”

J
ody and Carlie talked for a while with the average-looking guy in Twiggy’s Health Drinks. Harold watched the three of them gab and grin. Then the two women stood up. The average guy seemed to be saying good-bye to both of them, even touched Jody’s upper arm for a moment. She obviously didn’t take to that but didn’t do anything to remove his hand.

When Jody and Carlie left, the average guy took their table. He looked around, as if maybe they’d forgotten something, then ordered another juice drink.

Harold knew Sal would fall in behind Jody and Carlie, who would almost surely walk back to their subway stop.

But maybe not.

Harold had his choice. He could stay in the fruit drink bar and confront the average-looking guy who was probably just that—an average, innocent guy searching for life-enhancing vitamins. Or he could do what he was supposed to be doing, following and protecting Jody and Carlie.

Harold belched and went out into the warm night. He jaywalked, quickened his pace for a while, and eventually saw Sal up ahead of him. And ahead of Sal, Jody and Carlie.

They seemed to be headed back to the subway stop, all right. Harold turned a corner and jogged a short block, then continued half jogging, half walking. He figured he’d make the next cross street before Sal and the girls. Then he could keep up his steady pace, faster than theirs, and reach the subway stop before them.

There’d be nothing to connect him and Sal when they boarded the same train.

In Harold’s coat pocket was a packet of religious pamphlets proclaiming the Rapture would be next November the third, when the world would come to an end. Harold thought that if he was following someone who seemed to suspect he was a cop, he could pull out the pamphlets and start handing them out to his fellow passengers. That would allay suspicion.

It might work, if he was sure he’d been spotted and pegged for the law.

Harold had never mentioned this fallback plan to anyone.

Sal would shoot him if he knew about the pamphlets.

 

 

The killer sat in the sunlight on a bench at the edge of one of the area’s urban “pocket” parks. He didn’t mind Carlie and Jody leaving a similar bench facing another direction. He knew where to find them.

He had for the last ten minutes flirted with an attractive blond woman struggling to straighten her slightly bent front bicycle wheel. She had her legs spread for leverage, and with her short skirt was creating quite a show. She didn’t suspect that he’d stuck out his foot and given her bike a shove to cause her wobble and crash.

The killer’s gaze didn’t linger on her legs for long. It was her face that most interested him. Her blue eyes held a kind of cruel light, and her square chin lent her a vaguely defiant expression even at rest.

My type
.

The killer watched Jody and Carlie stand up and leave, undoubtedly still being trailed by the overconfident but not very bright cops who were assigned to watch and protect them.

They were so predictable that the killer almost yawned. Now the women would go to the same subway stop, take the same train. They would get off at separate stops, close to their respective homes. That’s when their guardian angels would also split up, to make sure each woman would make it home alive, Carlie to her apartment, Jody to the brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. The killer had to smile.

Blondie with the bike thought he was smiling at her. She tried again, feebly, to straighten the bike’s handlebars, then gave an elaborate shrug.

The killer got up, walked lazily to her, and easily aligned the handlebars. “Good as new—almost,” he said.

She said, “Fiona.”

The killer gave her the kind of amiable grin that was every salesman’s ambition.

“Is that the password?” he asked.

“That’s my name.”

“Is that the password?” he asked again.

She laughed.

“First or last name?” he asked.

“I thought, after the kind of looks you were giving me, that by now we could be on a first-name basis.”

“First names are good enough. I’ve met a Betty and a Zelda while I’ve been sitting here. You’re the first Fiona.”

“It’s not a common name.”

“You’re not a common girl. That’s Fiona with an
F
?”

“Uh-huh.”
As if he has to make sure. What did he expect, a PH?
“You friends with the women who just left?”

So she’d noticed he’d been watching Jody and Carlie. He didn’t like that.

“No. I thought I knew one of them from work.”

She leaned on her bike, flexing her legs to put on a show. “Let me guess—you’re an advertising executive. Or a trader who works on Wall Street.”

The killer smiled. “I was thinking
you
might be one of those things. Or an important CEO of an international company.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Most men assume I’m some kind of executive. Even dressed casually, riding my bike, I just look . . . businesslike.”

“I’ll say.”

“It’s a curse.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I guess not if you mean business,” she said, grinning. She got a plastic water bottle from a bracket on the bike and unscrewed the cap. She held the bottle out to the killer, who shook his head no, he wasn’t thirsty. She was. She tilted back her head and guzzled water. He watched her throat work, fascinated.

She noticed his interest and gave him what she no doubt thought was a dazzling smile as she capped the water bottle and replaced it on the bike.

“We on a first-name basis?” she asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because it doesn’t often happen that I fall off my bike, much less in front of a perfect stranger who I have to admit I’m drawn to.” She shrugged, making it cute. “It could be fate.”

“Or you ran over a rock.”

“I’d rather go with fate.”

“It certainly makes life more interesting,” he said. “It’s Brad.”

She tilted her head as if rolling the name around in her mind. “I’m not surprised. That’s a nice name, Brad. And you look nice. Like you’d be nice, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m known for nice.”

“You in the area?”

He grinned. “Sure. I’m right here.”

She laughed. “You know what I mean. Do you live in or around here?”

“Nope. Upper East Side.”

“That’s what men say when they want me to think they’re rich.”

“I’m rich.”

“That doesn’t matter to me. I only care about your mind.”

“I’m nice as well as rich.”

“That’s why I’m drawn to you, Brad. That and your modesty.”

“Are
you
rich?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “And I also live on the Upper East Side, near Second Avenue.”

“That’s why we’re here tonight in SoHo, isn’t it?”

“ ’Splain, please.”

“Hooking up with someone who isn’t from our
very
expensive neighborhood,” the killer said. “Though God knows it’s gotten expensive enough around here. Taxes are going up like an elevator.”

Fiona got her water bottle and helped herself to another drink, doing things with her tongue the killer couldn’t help but notice.

“I wouldn’t care to agree with that,” she said, then smiled. “Even though it’s true.”

“About the property taxes?”

“No. The hooking up. That’s why most of the people here come to this little park, though they’d never come right out and admit it. This park has sort of a reputation.”

That was news to the killer. He made a mental note of it.

“You can admit it to me,” he said. “We’re on a first-name basis.” He touched the back of her hand lightly with the tip of his forefinger and traced a gentle pattern. “We’re both here looking for someone interested in a first-name-only relationship. We both found someone.”

“You speak the simple truth, Brad.”

“Oh, always. Another truth I sense is that we should get to know each other even better. Who knows where it might lead?”

“Maybe nowhere beyond tonight,” she said. “I like to keep that option open.”

“It’s open, for both of us.”

She leaned toward him, and her loosely buttoned white blouse parted, showing considerable cleavage. “I believe in fate,” she said.

“So do I.”

“I’m glad I’m not a Betty or a Zelda.”

“Who are they?”

“The women you decided not to pursue. The ones you were watching earlier.”

“Oh, them. Do you know them?”

“Enough to know they aren’t for you.”

“I did talk to them earlier. They gave me different names.”

“Ah! Already they fibbed to you.”

He liked the way this woman lied. So smoothly and confidently. Kindred spirits.

“Fate led you to a Fiona,” she continued. “There aren’t many of us, and I’m the one you approached. Not a Mary or a Sandra or a
Sondra
, but me, a Fiona.”

“You approached me. Fell down in front of me on your bicycle, anyway.”

She shrugged. “Well, you weren’t approached by a Frances. That might have made a difference.”

“Maybe. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t care if Frances happened to be your name.” He touched her hand again. “Not that I don’t believe in fate. Fate and I are old friends. He’s done me another favor tonight.”

“You are
so
nice. But sometimes fate needs a little help. Now it’s up to us to acquaint ourselves with each other.”

“What we should do along that line is visit each other’s apartments, see how the other half lives.”

“Yes, that would facilitate our relationship,” Fiona said.

The killer considered kissing the hand he was touching, but decided that would be oddly inappropriate with this frank and unapologetic liar. “Your place first,” he said. “If things work out okay, my place next time.”

“Why start with my place?”

“I’d like you to be comfortable, surrounded by familiar things. You could know you were safe.”

Her lips arced in a wide smile. “You are so
very
nice.”

He moved closer and gently took the handlebars from her so he could walk the bike.

“You know what my ambition for tonight is?” he asked as they walked.

“Hmm. I think so.”

“It’s to make sure you don’t change your mind about that ‘nice’ remark.”

“See,” she said, smiling wider. “What a nice thing to say.”

But he seemed to be thinking of something else.