Twist (9 page)

C
onnie was awakened by the light from the bedside reading lamp.

 

She screwed up her eyes and turned her face into her pillow. The pleasures of last night—Brad with his hands on her, all over her, Brad entering her body, pushing into her, ramming her, flooded into her memory. The evening hadn’t gone at all as she’d planned. Then, within minutes after entering her apartment, it had gone exactly as she’d planned.

Plan B
, she thought. She realized there had always been a plan B.

Thank God he wore a condom
.

It seemed to her that the kind of deep and penetrating sex they had might lead to pregnancy almost every time. She knew it was foolish to think that way, but thinking had nothing to do with it.
Feeling
. That’s what it was about. It had not been like sex with other men. Not in its intensity. For a while he had turned her into a creature that lived only in a world of sensation. Consideration and caution, morality and logic, none of it meant a thing because none of it existed when he so thoroughly possessed her.

She derived some solace from the knowledge of the condom. Still, she couldn’t be sure. Condoms breaking or failing in other ways had led to entire industries of alternative means of protection.

She told herself not to be an idiot. She wasn’t in such a terrible situation. They’d had sex. He’d used protection.
So be a big girl and don’t start to worry ’til you miss a period.
Right now, all over the city, there were plenty of women in more danger of an unwanted pregnancy than she was.

But what if she
did
become pregnant? What would be her reaction? His reaction?

All the while she pondered, a part of her knew that it was something else about last night that was bothering her. What he’d done to her, what he now
could do
to her because of the power he held over her, seemed very much like prologue.

The possibility frightened and thrilled her.

She burrowed her forehead and eyes deeper into the pillow to escape the light.

“When you gonna turn the lamp off?” she asked, and for the first time wondered why he’d turned it on. There had been enough ambient light in the bedroom for him to make his way to the bathroom. She shifted slightly so one eye was exposed and could see the clock radio by the bed. Its green numerals indicated that it was 2:17
AM
.

“Sweetheart? The lamp?”

No answer.

She felt with an exploratory foot and decided that she was alone in the bed. Maybe Brad was in the bathroom. She scanned the dark rectangle of the doorway and saw that the light in the bathroom was still off.

Connie sighed. Now she was completely awake. With her mind even more awhirl.

“Brad? Honey?”

No answer. But she could hear him—someone—moving around.

She sat up in bed and the room spun.

Really
spun. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. She placed both hands on the mattress and clutched at the sheet so she wouldn’t fall off the bed.

“Brad?”

“Here, Connie.”

She couldn’t see him; the room was revolving around her so crazily it was as if a powerful strobe light were making everything lurch with irregular but increasing speed.

“What’s going on?” she asked breathlessly. “I’m so . . . It’s like a carnival ride.”

“Must have been something in that last drink you had,” Brad said. She had a fix on him now, saw him in the strobe light as he went spinning past again and again. Nude, the way he slept. But his hands were different. A different color. Pale. White. Gloves. He was wearing white rubber gloves.

And he was closer.

“Drink?” she asked, knowing she’d been drugged.

He laughed. “You want another?”

“No. I . . .”

“It will wear off soon,” he assured her. “Then you’ll know everything that’s happening. You’ll understand.”

He rolled her onto her stomach and she felt his hand encircle her right wrist. Her arm was forced upward. She tried to resist but possessed no strength at all. There was a ripping sound. Something—tape?—was wrapped around her wrist, fastening it to a spindle of the heavy brass headboard. She started to object, but heard an identical ripping sound, what she knew now was a length of tape being torn from the roll. The tape was pressed painfully over her mouth. Her lower lip was bleeding. She was sure of that.

She closed her eyes. She had to. She didn’t want to become nauseated and choke on her vomit behind the tape. She tried to reach for the tape with her free left hand, peel it off her mouth. Only she couldn’t find her mouth. Her arm and hand felt as if they were detached from her body. Her legs felt the same way, waving about with the elasticity of noodles. Her left wrist was quickly taped to another brass spindle. Then her ankles were taped to the footboard.

Material ripped, sounding almost like the tape. Connie felt her torn nightgown sliding from beneath her body. She knew she was lying nude now, face down and spread-eagle on the bed.

Connie closed her eyes. This—everything—was out of her control now. She could only wait to see what was going to happen, and endure it. Whatever, it would end....

She snapped alert and her body jerked as something acidic and powerful was waved beneath her nose. Her eyes bulged as she attempted to scream and heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears.

She was completely aware now, no longer dizzy. The room was now stationary. It was so sudden it amazed her.

And her mind. Her thinking. Her thinking was now clear.

Brad—or whatever his name was—appeared as he had earlier when the room had been spinning. Naked except for almost transparent white rubber gloves. He was staring at her with unblinking interest, his intention clear.

Connie watched the news, read the papers. She understood what was going on. Her eyes bulged even wider as she tried a louder scream. All she managed to do was strain something in her neck.

Brad pulled the dresser out from the wall and angled it toward the bed. Then he carefully tilted the mirror so Connie could see herself in it. She tried not to look but stared fascinated at the nude, spread-eagle woman on the bed. The woman who looked like nothing so much as a sacrifice to ancient gods.

Brad had his scuffed leather briefcase. He held it up so she could see it. Then he laid it on the floor and bent over it. When he straightened she was surprised to see that he had a small replica of the Statue of Liberty. He placed it on the dresser so it faced the bed.

He knelt to reach into the briefcase again. This time when he stood up he was holding a coiled whip. It was braided leather and glittered with inserted splinters of steel. He loosened his grip on it and it uncoiled snake-like to the floor.

Connie almost levitated off the bed in terror. She saw the woman in the mirror do the same. They exchanged a glance of horrible knowledge.

Seconds became minutes.

Her tormentor controlled even time.

 

 

Later, he turned her onto her flayed and burning back and buttocks, and went to his briefcase for his knife. She caught a glimpse in the mirror of its sharp point and long, serrated blade.

And a glimpse of
him
staring at her.

He would leave her eyelids intact. Bonnie Anderson’s eyes had bled and interfered with her vision, he was sure.

He bent over her.

She didn’t believe her pain could be greater without loss of consciousness.

She was wrong.

Her screams were constant and silent.

 

 

In the morning Fedderman returned to the street outside Carlie’s apartment. Sal and Harold were in their unmarked Ford, parked at the opposite corner.

Harold, on the passenger side, spotted Fedderman and pointed up toward Carlie’s apartment. Then he gave a thumbs-up sign.

Fedderman nodded, then took up position in the doorway across from Carlie’s building.

Fifteen minutes later, Carlie emerged from the building, took the few steps down to the sidewalk, and strode toward her subway stop.

Fedderman considered catching up with her, then changed his mind. He was sure she knew he was behind her anyway.

He should do his job. Do it right.

That was okay with Fedderman. Carlie was safe, at least for the time being. She’d made it through the night.

She hadn’t been chosen.

“I
n the bedroom,” the uniformed cop said to Quinn, when he stepped through the open door into Constance Mason’s apartment.

There had been no need to tell Quinn. CSU personnel were swarming the living room and what he could see of the kitchen, plucking and tweezering and spraying and collecting. What Quinn often thought of as the dance of the white gloves.

Renz had phoned half an hour ago to tell Quinn that a woman named Constance Mason had been found dead in her apartment this morning. Judging by what was left of her, she’d been the same type as the killer’s previous victim, Bonnie Anderson. Blond, firm chin and broad forehead, and curvaceous.

Quinn made his way past the kitchen and bath, to a bedroom at the end of the hall. When he stepped inside he saw a white-gloved tech who’d somehow separated himself from the swarm and was dusting for prints. He nodded to Quinn, and dusted his way out.

It took Quinn a few seconds to take in Renz, and Nift the medical examiner, standing over the bed. On the bed was something Quinn had to force himself to look at.

“Meet Connie Mason,” Renz said. He’d mentioned the victim’s name to Quinn on the phone.

“She’d get up, smile, and shake hands with you,” Nift said, “but I don’t think you’d like that.”

“Not ‘Constance’?” Quinn asked Renz.

“Nobody named Constance isn’t called Connie,” Renz said. “Even dead.”

Nift said, “By the way, Quinn, where’s Pearl?”

“She sends her regrets.”

“Tell her I said hey.”

Quinn ignored him and moved closer to the bed.

A rectangle of silver duct tape had been removed from Connie’s mouth but still clung by a corner. Her pale lips were slightly parted. Her eyes were wide and staring, making Quinn momentarily wish there was something to that old notion that killers’ images were emblazoned on the eyes of their victims at the time of death.

“At least she still has her eyelids,” Quinn said.

“A quality of mercy?” Renz wondered aloud.

“More like throwing shit into the game to confuse us,” Quinn said.

Renz shrugged. “You’re the one who knows these sleazebags.”

Her stomach had been sliced open in a wide U shape just over her pubis, the flap of raggedly cut skin carefully laid back to reveal whatever of her internal organs hadn’t been removed and slung all over the bed.

“I took a peek,” Nift said, “and her back and ass look pretty much like hamburger. Scourged. I think they did that during the Spanish Inquisition.”

“But back then it was the cops,” Quinn said.

Quinn noticed something familiar jutting from the carnage of the victim’s stomach cavity. Covered with blood was a familiar statuette of the Statue of Liberty.

“Not much doubt who did this,” Renz said.

Quinn nodded. “No doubts now, if there ever were any. You’ve got your serial killer, Harley.”

“Not that I wanted one,” Renz said.

Quinn believed him. There was no political gain to be had from what was happening, only pitfalls.

Quinn looked up at Renz. “What do we know so far?”

“The victim was some kind of accountant,” Renz said. “She had an eight o’clock meeting with a client and didn’t show. They were supposed to have coffee at a place not far from here. At quarter to nine the guy she was supposed to meet came here. He found the door unlocked. Opened it part way and called in, but got no reply. He started inside; then he smelled something. He wasn’t sure what, but it scared him. That’s when he went downstairs and got the super. They came in together, got sick together. The super, guy name of Ike, called nine-eleven. Like that thing on the bed needed medical attention.”

“Anybody talk to Ike and the guy she was supposed to meet?”

“Uniforms got statements from both of them. The guy Connie was scheduled to meet owns a jewelry store on West Forty-fifth Street. She kept books for him. Ike’s story is essentially what I just told you.”

“Where’d you get her ID?”

“The purse over there on her dresser. And there are several identifying papers in and on her desk, in the living room. Also these.” He drew a plastic evidence bag from his coat’s side pocket and handed it to Quinn, who carefully examined its contents.

“Photographs of Bonnie Anderson,” Renz said. “His previous victim. They were on the floor near the bed, where they wouldn’t get blood on them.”

“He wants unimpeachable credit for the murder,” Nift said. “Can’t blame him for that.”

Quinn was glad Pearl wasn’t there to hear Nift. They would definitely get into it.

“Connie have a computer?” Quinn asked.

“Had one. Looks like the killer took it. There was a wireless mouse and a modem on the desk, but that’s all.”

“Smartphone?”

“Yeah. He took that, too. Call it and you get nothing useful.”

“Smart killer.”

“He sure as hell works clean,” Renz said. “Literally. He wore rubber or latex gloves, and it appears that after he was finished with Connie, he took a shower in the bathroom. There’s still blood there, and no doubt some in the drain. But probably it’s all the victim’s blood. Of course, he wasn’t careless enough to leave bloody fingerprints.” Renz gave a grim smile that seemed to include his double chin. “Maybe someday he will.”

Quinn doubted that. “What about the victim’s nails?” he asked Nift.

“Nothing much under them,” Nift said. “Nothing suggests a struggle before she was tied up and sliced open. My guess is we’ll find drugs in her.”

Quinn glanced again at the corpse. “God, I hope so.”

And they did find drugs. Traces of Ambien. There was white wine in her stomach, too. To help Constance Mason nap before her ordeal.

 

 

They were sitting around Q&A that evening—Quinn, Fedderman, Sal, and Harold—along with Helen Iman, the NYPD profiler. Quinn was the only one in his chair. The others were all simply standing, or perched on the edges of their desks. Helen the profiler, lanky and over six feet tall, with a choppy carrot-colored summer hairdo, was half sitting on Pearl’s unoccupied desk. She looked like a girls’ athletic director, in baggy shorts and a Knicks T-shirt, leaning back with her arms crossed. She wasn’t trying to figure a strategy for the second half, though; she was trying to get a handle on this killer, and share it.

On Quinn’s desk were copies of the Bonnie Anderson photographs that had been left next to Connie Mason’s corpse, along with current shots of Connie’s mutilated body, taken in her bedroom by the police photographer and printed out and disseminated immediately.

“I suppose we’re going to find photos of Connie Mason’s body next to the killer’s next victim,” Quinn said. He remembered what Nift had said about unimpeachable evidence. “He doesn’t want credit for the murders to go to anyone else.”

“Seems obvious he hates women,” Fedderman said, “the way he guts them like that.”

“But why the Statue of Liberty in the open wound,” Quinn asked, “if he’s going to the trouble of taking photographs?”

“The photos are his mementos,” Helen said. “The Lady Liberty statuettes are ours.”

“Being a serial killer doesn’t necessarily mean you’re un-American,” Harold said.

The others stared silently at him.

“So why does he open his victims up like that?” Sal asked.

“Maybe he wants to learn more about them,” Helen said. “Maybe what he’s doing is a metaphor for spilling all the secrets.”

“Looking inside them,” Harold said.

“Nobody—I mean, no man—really understands women,” Sal rasped. “But we don’t go around gutting them with a sharp knife. Most of us don’t.”

“We’re dealing with somebody who does,” Helen said. “And that’s about all we know about him.”

“If we know even that,” Fedderman said. “He might have an accomplice.”

“Not unless it’s his brother,” Harold said. “They might have the same background, hang ups, and compulsions. And they wouldn’t necessarily kill together. They might take turns.”

Quinn thought that Harold now and then showed rare insight. Usually nothing came of it, but occasionally Harold’s wild conjectures were accurate. Or at least provided new perspectives. He should leave his brain to science, Harold.

“It would be a first,” Fedderman said. “Alternating brother serial killers.” He hitched up his belt, but his pants dropped back down to where they’d been. “It’d take a lot of mutual trust.”

“Something we can’t rule out, though,” Sal said.

Helen shook her head and smiled at him. “Men and their mothers,” she said. “Talk about love-hate relationships.”

“Their fathers too,” Harold said.

“But they usually don’t go around killing men who remind them of their fathers,” Quinn pointed out.
Or in pairs.

The street door opened and Pearl came in. She’d left her observation post across the street from Carlie Clark’s apartment after an NYPD radio car arrived. The police car was still parked outside the apartment, and would remain there until Sal arrived to take up the watch.

“Have I got time to stop someplace and get a carry-out coffee?” Sal asked Pearl.

“We’ve got foam cups with lids here,” Pearl said. “You can take one with you.”

Sal looked as if he wanted to say something, but he saw no percentage in criticizing coffee brewed by Pearl. He simply smiled at her and left to drive the unmarked over to Carlie’s apartment and set the radio car guys free to roam.

Pearl made her way down the row of desks toward her own, where Helen the profiler still lounged with her lanky six-foot-plus body. Lazily, Helen straightened up and moved aside, ceding Pearl her territory.

As Pearl passed Quinn’s desk, she glanced down at the photos from the Bonnie Anderson murder, lying next to current police shots from Connie Mason’s bedroom.

“So where are the babies?” she asked.

They all stared at her.

“What babies?” Quinn said.

“Both those women have been cut open as if for C-section births,” Pearl said.

“But neither one was pregnant,” Quinn said. “We know
that
. Don’t we?”

“We know it,” Fedderman said.

“I don’t care,” Pearl said. She pointed to the photographs. “C-sections. Performed by a madman, but C-sections nonetheless.”

She was tired and moved around her desk corner to sit in her padded chair.

Helen got out of her way.