Twist (30 page)

J
ody was on the way back to where Quinn and Pearl were, at Gigi Beardsley’s apartment. She was eager to tell Quinn she’d been able to place the killer with the victim near the approximate time of the murder. All Quinn had to do was phone the medical examiner and ascertain whether Gigi had Grey Goose vodka in her stomach at the time of her death. That shouldn’t be so difficult.

Then Jody felt a stab of nausea, remembering actually
seeing
Gigi’s stomach.

She forced that vivid picture from her mind, or at least to a compartmentalized place where it might lie unnoticed, and assured herself that the police lab could work miracles. Surely they could find traces of vodka, and should be able to identify the brand. Well, the brand, maybe.

The temperature had gained another few degrees, and Jody realized she was walking fast, perspiring.

She stopped, causing several people to pause and stare at her. Telling herself to take her time, she moved into the shadow of an awning over the window of a small bookshop. It struck her that you didn’t see very many small independent bookstores these days. The future pecking away.

Best to use part of the tech onslaught to phone Quinn, make sure he and her mother were still at the victim’s apartment. Jody fished her iPhone from her purse and was surprised when it buzzed and vibrated in her hand.

She automatically swished her thumb and answered it before she’d fully read the call’s origin—Golden Sunset Assisted Living, a New Jersey number.

“Jody?” called her grandmother’s voice from the phone. “Are you there, dear?”

Well, no problem here. Her grandmother would surely understand that she was working.

“Hi, Gramma. I can’t talk now. I’m—”

“About to hear—and this I don’t often say—the
opportunity
of your lifetime. For this, Jody, dear, you find time.”

Huh?
“I’m helping to apprehend a serial killer, Gramma.”

“Killer schmiller. What? Will he disappear like a magician’s bunny?”

“Maybe just like that, Gramma. This is really important!”

“I don’t have to tell you who you sound like now, dear. This opportunity—”

“Will keep. It will keep, Gramma. Really!”

“Will it, dear? The impetuousness of youth—and I mean this not as an insult—is sometimes unable to pause and open the golden door to the future. Even, I am sad to say, they ignore opportunity’s knock. Often it isn’t a loud knock, and yet—”

“What is this opportunity, Gramma? Do you want me to buy gold?”

Jody realized she was talking too loud, drawing attention. She moved farther back into the shadows of the doorway, near a tall, leaning display of books about impending climate change. Global warming.
It’s here! It’s here!
Jody almost said aloud, feeling beads of sweat trickling down the inside of her right arm.

“Not gold—and I assure you I would have no reservations about buying gold at this time, when impending disaster looms, and we mustn’t think about that, because what’s the use, disasters being what they are? Not gold, dear. Something even more valuable than gold or any of the other precious metals. In so far as any metal is precious when compared to the value of flesh and bone.”

Good God!
Jody realized she was squeezing the phone. She had observed her mother talking on the phone to her grandmother, seen the signs of stress. At the time, she hadn’t understood, and had even been critical of her mother.

Was it time to inform her grandmother that she was “breaking up”?

Jody didn’t like the imagery of the remark. Besides, Gramma was never really convinced of this convenient cellular interference, and Jody had been openly disdainful of her mother for blatantly lying to
her
mother. There was no doubt that the old woman wasn’t actually deceived.

Right was right. Wasn’t that what Quinn preached? Sort of?

Jody drew a deep breath.

“What is this better-than-golden opportunity?” she asked her grandmother.

“It turns out—though to say this in such a trivial manner and without trumpets is to disregard what is, perhaps, meaningful fate—that
Doctor
Milton Kahn has a daughter.”

“I’m not looking for new friends right now,” Jody said.

“Oh, I’m thinking of more than mere friendship, dear.”

A startling thought crossed Jody’s mind. “Are you matchmaking?”

“It’s an honorable tradition, dear.”

Jody was puzzled. “I’m straight, Gramma.”

“A daughter who has a
friend,
dear. Which is, in this instance, a man, and is another word for
find
. A recently divorced friend who is a respected chiropractor. His name is Austin Morton.”

“Isn’t that a British car, Gramma?” She really did feel like breaking the connection but fought the impulse.

“Not in this instance. He is from the Bronx. If you were—and I say this with a grandmother’s instinctive knowledge of how personalities might mesh—simply—and
simply
is an understatement as to the momentous importance of the matter—to look at
Doctor
Austin Morton’s photograph on Facebook, and read about his considerable, not to say admirable, accomplishments, you would—”

“You’re breaking up, Gramma.”

And just a fraction of the guilt that her mother felt settled on Jody.

 

 

Quinn gave Nift the info—they knew the victim’s last hours, the approximate time of her death. And her killer had actually been seen, though identifying him for certain in a courtroom still seemed a long shot.

Most of the Q&A personnel—or human resources—were in the squad-room-like office on West Seventy-ninth. The desks were in two rows, facing each other. There was nothing in between. The place even smelled like a precinct squad room—that unique combination of desperation and perspiration, of misplaced old church pews. There was remorse here without atonement.

Quinn thought the arrangement might keep the heat down, allowing more circulation from the underpowered window-unit air conditioners, than if there were a lot of cubicles. His office was the only actual cubical, and it wasn’t permanent. In fact, it usually had only two or three sides in place. It seemed that the hotter the weather, and whatever case they were on, the fewer cubicle walls were up. There was only one of the portable fiberboard panels in use now, propped behind Quinn’s desk. Everybody could see anyone, disagree with anyone, and interrupt anyone. This communal arrangement sometimes bred irritation and conflict. And solutions.

Helen, who didn’t have a desk, was pacing sockless in her new Nikes. She was wearing a light beige linen suit with a skirt short enough—on her—so the play of muscle in her calves and lower thighs was plainly visible. Quinn supposed that was what everyone was looking at while they listened intently to what she was saying.

“He’s nearing the zenith of his career,” she said of the killer. “He must sense that. We have his name, we have pictures, we have eye witnesses who saw him with at least one of the victims. His relationship with the media isn’t working out as well as he planned. He’s being painted as a monster. And we almost had him on Liberty Island. He’s still probably breathing hard after that one. They say murder destroys a little bit of the killer each time he or she kills, and they’re right. Gant’s rationale is being whittled away. His murders aren’t supplying the long-lasting relief they used to. His memories of them are tainted now by the fear we instilled in him by breathing down his neck. The latest murder was by far more the work of a mad butcher than a clever and meticulous serial killer.”

“Mad butchers we can handle,” Sal rasped. “I know one in Brooklyn who’s still pissed off over losing this thumb he had that wouldn’t behave.”

No one said anything, choosing not to hear any more about the Brooklyn butcher and his misbehaving thumb.

“Scales of justice,” Harold said, after a while.

“Something else,” Helen said.

“About the butcher?” Harold asked.

She ignored him. It was hard to know when Harold was joking.

Helen went to a slim leather portfolio she sometimes carried instead of a purse. She drew out two photographs that looked as if they’d been printed on ordinary computer paper.

They were headshots of the same woman, one head-on, one in profile.

“Mug shots from when Mildred Gant was arrested,” she explained. “Before she had her hair cut.”

The photos were passed around.

“Not an attractive woman,” Fedderman said.

“True,” Helen said. “But did you notice the facial bone structure, especially around the eyes, the strong cheekbones and chin? Isn’t it familiar?”

They had all seen it.

“But there’s a world of difference in attractiveness,” Fedderman said.

“That’s not what the killer’s thinking about,” Helen said. She propped her fists on her hips. “Anybody here think this woman doesn’t—or didn’t—resemble Carlie?”

“She resembles Carlie slightly,” Jody said.

“Considerably,” Sal said.

“Whatever,” Helen said. “We can use that resemblance.”

Quinn wondered if Renz had prompted Helen about what tack she should take. He doubted it. Renz was her boss only up to a point. Helen was, in many ways, her own woman.

“The killer’s still not making mistakes,” Quinn said to her.

“But he doesn’t
know
that. He’ll start questioning himself now. He can’t be sure of what he’s left behind.”

“So maybe he’ll take a break,” Pearl said. “Let things calm down for a while.”

Helen, who had begun pacing again, shook her head no. Her long, rounded calves flexed, flexed, flexed with every step. “No, no. He’s the one who set the tempo for this game, and wanted to play as fast and hard as possible. He needs to take another victim as soon as he can. He needs reassurance as well as relief from his compulsion.”

“Like climbing right back up on a horse that’s thrown you,” Harold said.

They all looked at him.

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Helen said.

She moved back and forth gracefully, muscles working smoothly in her lanky body. There was about her an equine quality that Quinn hadn’t noticed before. Maybe he saw it now because of Harold’s
horse
remark.

Quinn’s desk phone jangled. He snatched up the receiver and turned his back on the others for partial privacy.

“Nift,” the caller said simply, identifying himself.

“It’s Quinn.”

“You wanted me to call.”

“You got something?”

“Yes, and probably.”

Quinn knew Nift was talking about Jody’s vodka question.

Nift went on. “The victim had a fair amount of alcohol content in her bloodstream, and had ingested some not long before her death. I can’t say for sure that she’d recently drunk vodka, but it’s certainly possible. As for the brand name, I wouldn’t even be able to recognize my favorite drink.”

“That’ll have to do,” Quinn said.

“If I’d gotten to her sooner . . .”

“But you didn’t. None of us did.”

“Something else,” Nift said. “There were traces of dopamine in her blood.”

“How much?”

“Again, it’s difficult to say. My guess is not very much, but combined with the vodka, or whatever alcoholic drink, it was enough to cause a sudden drop in blood pressure, and then unconsciousness. Dopamine and the alcohol would have made her drowsy and easy to handle. For a while. Then, when she awoke, stripped and bound up like a Thanksgiving turkey, she would have been helpless and well on her way to a memorable experience—for the killer.”

“Anything else?” Quinn asked. He didn’t like being on the phone with Nift unless useful information was being passed. Pearl was right—there was something repellant about any sort of contact with the little bastard.

“Tell Pearl I said hello.”

Was he reading my mind?
“I’ll do that.”

Quinn replaced the receiver more violently than he intended.

“Nift,” he explained.

He repeated for them what the nasty little ME had said, though he didn’t pass on Nift’s personal greeting to Pearl.

“So we’ve got Gant solid as the man who was with Gigi Beardsley shortly before her murder,” Helen said. “What with the vodka and dopamine cocktail, the liquor store identifications are now completely credible.”

“It’s a case,” Jody said, “but not air tight.”

“We’ve got everything but the killer,” Pearl said.

“We’ll have him soon,” Helen said softly. “We’ve got precisely what he needs now more than ever. What he’ll no more be able to stay away from than a junkie from his fix.”

No one asked what she meant.

They all knew and were afraid she was right.

“Carlie,” Helen said.

L
et them look for him.

Urban cops were trying to find him, and he was a country boy—or could revert to one whenever he chose. He could feel relatively safe here.

Dred Gant was wearing Levi’s, so he didn’t mind boosting himself over the low, time-darkened stone wall that bordered Central Park along Central Park West. The country here in the city.

On the park side of the wall, he paused to take in the scene. The sun was low and the shadows long. There were people over on a trail. A couple lying next to each other beneath a tree. A homeless man in tatters, seated like a lone sentinel on one of the benches.

Was
he a sentinel? An undercover cop?

The man didn’t seem to be aware even of the pigeons pecking away at the ground in front of him. One of the birds was damn near sitting on his shoe.

Dred trusted no one at this point—
no one
. Even though his photo and the idiotic police sketch of him had been shown on TV and printed in the papers, he thought it unlikely that anyone would recognize him in his faded jeans, Mets T-shirt, and baseball cap and sunglasses. His jogging shoes gave him a way to run like hell if he so chose, without attracting a great deal of attention. Especially here in the park, where runners were plentiful.

He walked along a path edging the woods, head bowed, kicking at pebbles. knowing that Carlie was radioactive. What really bothered him was that Quinn and company
knew
that he knew.

And they knew he wouldn’t, that he
couldn’t
, stay away from her. Dred himself knew that.

It was what the game had come down to, and both men understood it. They had both, in their ways, cut angles and blocked avenues so that they were operating in a smaller and smaller universe.

So that
something
had to happen, because the status quo was unbearable.

A squeezable air horn beeped, and a woman in Spandex shorts swerved around him and rode up ahead on a bicycle. She gave him a wave over her shoulder without looking back, letting him know she’d sounded only a friendly message with the horn to alert him she was bearing down on him.

He watched her, following her progress. She was pedaling hard, causing the bike and her hips to dip left, then right, left, right, left, right . . . a rhythm as old as time.

She glanced back, and he knew she’d been aware that he was watching her. All that ass swishing had been for him.
Look at me, look at me . . .

So he looked. Her long blond hair was in a ponytail that swayed in contra-measure time with her hips.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He thought it might be possible to begin jogging, not to catch up with her, but to keep her in sight so he could know when and where she stopped. When the trail curved, he could run straight cross country and more or less maintain the distance between them.

And draw attention if anyone was tailing him.

He’d checked carefully before leaving his apartment in the Village. He was in a defensive, not a predatory, mood. If he were going to stalk Carlie today, he would have waited for her outside her apartment, or latched on to her when she left work.

They didn’t know where he lived, so he didn’t think they would be on his tail unless he got near Carlie.

To be on the safe side, he’d taken a number-three subway train uptown, lost himself in the crowds of Times Square, then gone to the Port Authority Terminal and ridden another subway before surfacing on Seventy-ninth Street.

Was he going mad? It had been mentioned in the newspapers and on television (the bitch Minnie Miner). How could these people who had never seen him, who had no idea who he was, sagely pronounce him insane?

Part of the game. They want me to
think
I might be insane
.

It seemed natural to strike out from the subway stop toward the park. He felt more secure above ground now, walking on the surface of the planet. Dred could usually sense when he was being followed. At least, he liked to think so.

If anyone had been on his tail, he was sure he’d eluded him. Or
her
.

He thought about Pearl Kasner and her daughter, Jody. Nancy Weaver. Helen Iman. The women who were Quinn’s allies. His hunting buddies. Dred knew he couldn’t underestimate them, but he didn’t fear
them
. He saw them more as the potential objects of his game than as worthy opponents.

The object he now wanted, needed,
would have
, was Carlie Clark.

It would be dark soon. The sky was clouding up in a mockery of rain. Dred was walking among towering old trees, and shadows were growing along the path. As everyone knew, it was dangerous in the park at night. Killers could lurk in the thick foliage. In the blackness of shadows.

Dred smiled. He might be seen as a possible predator if he didn’t get out of the park soon. He’d laid the groundwork for that kind of suspicion, turned the city into a kill zone.

He crossed to a main trail and began moving in the direction of the familiar skyline along Central Park West.

Out of the jungle, into the jungle.

 

 

Minnie Miner on TV.
Damn her!
He hated her
now
, the way she was talking about him.

The killer leaned forward in his ruined antique wing chair and turned up the volume with his remote.

“Is it true,” Minnie was asking Helen the profiler, “that the killer’s mental affliction has reached an explosively extreme level?”

“The stress on him certainly has,” Helen said. “Notice the murders are closer together and more violent and vicious.”

Minnie looked interested. “His mind is unraveling?”

“In a sense, yes. A killer like this, who carries the memory weight of such a large number of victims, eventually becomes mentally affected by what he knows are crimes.
Sins
, if you will. He sees himself sometimes for what he is and can’t deny. He knows we’re in the end game. He
wants
to be stopped, but in some startling, newfound manner.”

“He wants fame
and
anonymity,” Minnie said. “That must set up quite a conflict.”

“His mind is a jumble of conflicts. Not just one. He’s a sick man as well as an evil one. At this stage, he’s coming apart inside, knows it, and can’t prevent it.”

“The frustration must be driving him mad.”

“Considering that he was mad to begin with, we probably can’t imagine his deteriorated state of mind.”

“Do you think it’s possible that he’ll give himself up?” Minnie asked.

“Possible, but I doubt it.”

“He’d have all the drama of a trial ahead of him,” Minnie pointed out.

“But not his cloak of anonymity.”

“But he’s a mental case,” Minnie said. “A psychopath. How can the police predict any of his moves if he might not know what he’s going to do himself ?”

Gant was on his feet without remembering exactly how he’d gotten out of his chair.
Why does she refer to me as a psychopath
?

He knew where the program was shot, could go directly to it in the maze of the city.

“He’s not that sort of mental case,” Helen said. “He’s actually quite intelligent and knows exactly what he wants and how he’ll go about trying to get it.”

“But he’s twisted.”

“Yes, somewhere along the line he became twisted. And dangerous.”

Very good
, Dred thought.
Twisted. Another way of saying I’m smarter than you are.

He sat back down, calmer. Then he stood up and went into the kitchen, got a bottle of sipping bourbon and a glass from the cabinet. He put ice cubes in a glass, then the bourbon with a splash of water.

By the time he’d gone back into the living room there was an attorney’s commercial on TV, about various kinds of prescription medicines with horrible side effects that would be the basis for highly profitable lawsuits.

Dred switched it off. Sat in the silence. Drank.

Thought.

It struck him that there were two things wrong with using his mother’s money. First: It was
her
money, an undeniable bond between the two of them. Second: He should be thinking about Carlie Clark.

She was bait, of course.

But bait was frequently stolen.

It was time to stop agonizing with the same thoughts over and over again, to stop acting them out in his mind.

It was time he approached Carlie again.