Mister X

1

Quinn had found a box of paper clips in his bottom desk drawer and was just straightening up when the dead woman entered his office.

She'd startled him, the way she'd come in without making any noise.

She wasn't what you'd call beautiful, but she was attractive, with slim hips and legs inside new-looking stiff jeans, small breasts beneath a white sleeveless blouse. Her shoulder-length hair was brown, her eyes a deeper brown and slightly bulbous. She had symmetrical features with oversized lips, a slight overbite. A yellow file folder stuffed with what looked like newspaper clippings was tucked beneath her left arm. Her right hand held a brown leather shoulder bag, the strap scrunched up to act as a handle. She'd said on the phone her name was Tiffany Keller. If she were still alive, Quinn thought, she'd be pushing thirty.

There was a kind of grim resolve to her expression, as if she'd just been affronted and was about to fire back.

The generous mouth suddenly arced into a toothy smile, and the dogged expression disappeared entirely, as if a face like hers couldn't hold such a visage for long. Quinn was left with the impression that he'd momentarily glimpsed someone else entirely.

"Captain Frank Quinn, I presume."

"Just Quinn," he said. "Like the lettering on the door, Quinn and Associates Investigations."

"I was aware you were no longer with the NYPD," she said.

"Want to sit down?" he asked, motioning with a paper clip toward one of the walnut chairs angled in front of his desk.

"I'll stand, thanks." Her smile widened. "I'm Tiffany Keller."

He continued staring at the woman while his right hand groped for the empty glass ashtray he used to contain paper-clips. "You said when you phoned earlier to make this appointment that you were Tiffany Keller. Would you be the same Tiffany Keller who was a victim of a serial killer?"

"That would be me."

Unable to look away from her, he turned the tiny box upside down and dropped the paper clips into the ashtray, hearing the faint clickety sound that told him he'd hit his glass target. "Excuse me, but aren't you dead?"

"Not exactly."

Wondering where this was all going, Quinn tossed the empty paper-clip box into the wastebasket inside the desk's kneehole. It landed on recently shredded paper and didn't make a sound. "What is it you want, Tiffany?"

"I want you to find the Carver."

The Carver was a serial killer who'd taken five victims, the last one five years ago, and then suddenly ceased killing. In the way of most serial killers, he'd slain only women. His victims' nipples had been sliced off and a large X carved on their torsos just beneath their breasts. Then their throats had been cut.

At the time, Quinn had been laid up after being shot in the leg during a liquor store hold-up, and hadn't been involved in the Carver investigation. He'd followed it in the papers and on TV news with a temporary invalid's distracted interest. It had been one of his few alternatives to staring at the ceiling. If he remembered correctly, Tiffany Keller had been the Carver's last victim.

He leaned back in his desk chair and studied his visitor more closely.

She didn't wilt under his scrutiny.

"Actually I'm Tiffany's twin sister," she said.

"Then why the act?" he asked.

She smiled even wider. Lots of even white molars. Quinn would bet she'd never had a cavity. The large white smile gave her a kind of flashy cheerleader look. It would dazzle you even in the cheap seats.

"I thought one of the Carver's victims herself appealing to you to take this case might be more convincing," she said. She spoke with a hint of accent, her intonations flat and slightly drawn out. She wasn't from the Northeast. Probably someplace Midwestern. Corn country. "I'm Chrissie." Ahm. "Chrissie Keller. My twin sister and I were named after two of our mom's favorite eighties recording stars, Chrissie Hynde and Tiffany."

"Tiffany who?"

"She didn't use a last name. Some artists don't."

"Some artists I've met don't, either," Quinn said.

"Like pickpockets and confidence men and such?"

"Uh-huh. And impersonators."

"I didn't have to impersonate Tiffany," she said. "I just wanted you to think that maybe, for only a second or two, you were face-to-face with her. A victim asking that her killer be brought to justice."

"An emotional appeal."

"You got it."

"Justice is a hard thing to find in this world, Chrissie. Sometimes even hard to define. It can be a lot of work and expense, and then we might not like it when we find it."

"Or we might glory in it."

Never having been in her position, Quinn found it difficult to disagree.

"I have the means to pay you for your work," she said. "And what I want to do with my money is find out who killed Tiffany and make sure he pays for his crime. This might sound strange, but I think that's why I have the money. Why I won the Tri-State Triple Monkey Squared Super Jackpot." She shifted her weight in the stiff jeans so she was standing hip-shot. "That's three monkeys in a row three times," she said with a note of pride.

"You did that?" he said, figuring she must be talking about slot-machine winnings.

She swiveled back and forth on the foot her weight rested on, as if idly crushing a small insect. Her shoes were rubber sandals that looked as if they must hurt her feet. "I surely did. With a lucky quarter, and a good reason to win the hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars." Her face broke into the big smile. "That's still a lot of money after taxes."

"Even here in New York," Quinn said. He leaned back again in his chair, farther this time, making it squeal a warning that it might tip and send him sprawling, make him pay for flirting with danger. He said, "Now you're on a mission."

"That I am, Mr. Quinn. Don't tell me to go to the police, because I already have. They're not interested. The Carver murders happened too long ago, and I got the impression the police don't want to be reminded of a serial killer case they never solved."

"Bureaucracies hate being reminded of their failures."

"I'm not interested in what they hate or don't hate. I'm interested in justice for Tiffany."

Justice again.

"People on a mission scare me," Quinn said, thinking he had a lot of room to talk. But what he'd said was true. He sometimes scared himself. "You're not from New York."

She looked a little surprised and licked her big red lips. "It shows that much?"

"Not a lot," Quinn said. He tapped a forefinger to his cheekbone beneath his right eye and smiled. "Trained observer."

Chrissie pulled the chair closer to the desk and sat down. She crossed her legs tightly, as if she were wearing a skirt and not jeans, or as if she thought Quinn might glimpse too much denim-clad thigh and go berserk and attack her. "I'm from Holifield, Ohio. So was Tiffany, of course. It's a small town. Most folks work for the chemical plant or for Tread-strong Truck Tire Manufacturing. Tiffany worked in the plant for a while; then she came here to New York to try to become an actress. She got killed instead." A firm expression came over Chrissie's face. Her lips compressed together over her protruding teeth and paled, but only for an instant. "I want that rectified."

"Avenged?"

"That, too. You should know, Mr. Quinn, that when one twin dies the other also dies a little. And the way Tiffany died…well, it's almost like it happened to both of us. Twins' deaths are special."

"Everyone's death is special to them."

Chrissie leaned forward in her chair, her hands cupped over her knees. She had long fingers, well-kept nails. No rings. "The police called the Carver investigation a cold case, Mr. Quinn. I want it heated up again. I want my mission to be your mission."

"You need to give this some thought," Quinn said. "The NYPD cops aren't fools. Most of the time, anyway. They couldn't solve the Carver murders five years ago."

"I've read about you, Mr. Quinn. When it comes to serial killers, you're smarter than the police. Smarter than anyone."

"Now you're making me blush."

"I doubt if much of anything does that," she said.

"Now you've reverted to insult."

"I didn't mean it that way. I was referring to your experience, the fact that you're a winner."

"Praise again. I'm getting whiplash."

"I'll put my faith in you, and my money on you," Chrissie said.

"Investigations go into the cold-case file; time passes… They get harder to solve. I couldn't promise you much."

"I'm not interested in promises," Chrissie said. "Just results. Like you are." The smile came again, a red slash of amusement that broke into speech. "They say you're only interested in results, that you skirt the rules in ways an actual cop couldn't. That you're a hunter who never gives up." She edged even farther forward in her chair, as if she might spring across the desk and devour him with her big smile. "What do you say?"

"I give up. What do I say?"

"You say yes, of course."

"I guess I shouldn't have left it up to you."

He watched her pick up her worn leather purse from where she'd leaned it against the chair leg and reach into it for her checkbook.

He didn't try to stop her. For all he knew she was right. Right and lucky. That was why she'd won the Tri-State Triple Monkey Squared Super Jackpot.

What had he ever won?