Mister X

43

Back at the office, Quinn gave his detectives, including Vitali and Mishkin, the name of Erin's hotel, the Melbourne, and more fully described his meeting with her.

They all listened closely, temporarily forgetting about the heat and the humming and occasionally hammering air conditioner.

They were particularly interested in Erin's reaction to their client's photograph.

"So now we've got two missing women," Sal said. "Chrissie and whoever impersonated Chrissie."

"And they look nothing alike," Fedderman added.

The phone on Quinn's desk rang. He nodded at Pearl, and she picked up the receiver. "Quinn and Associates."

The phone greeting still didn't sound familiar to Quinn; he'd been too long in the NYPD.

Pearl held the receiver out to him and silently mouthed, Renz.

"You got anything fresh on House?" Renz asked when Quinn had gotten on the line.

"Nothing that would excite you," Quinn said.

"I had a rush preliminary done on the postmortem. The victim was alive up until the time her throat was slashed. There was plenty of blood on the panties stuffed in her mouth, but it was all hers. CSU found some hairs that might be anybody's. The place had been wiped of prints here and there, where the killer must have touched things. Also there were some glove smudges. There was a wine bottle in the trash. Merlot. No prints on that, and no DNA. Couple of wineglasses in the dishwasher, also clean of prints. Some red wine in the victim's stomach, too. Same as what was left in the bottle. Musta been a party."

"Up to a point," Quinn said.

"Or an edge. We got the hairs, anyway, some of them with follicle attached, so we got DNA samples. We get a suspect and make a match and we might have our killer."

"Getting the suspect is the problem," Quinn said, thinking if the suspect had ever been in Joyce House's apartment at any time before the night of the murder, the hair and DNA match could have come from an earlier visit and not be much in the way of hard evidence.

"Looks like they came home to her place with a bottle of wine-or she already had the bottle there. Then they had drinks, maybe cunnilingus sex, and murder. They musta known each other, had some kind of ongoing relationship."

"If they didn't meet that night. And if she wasn't raped."

"Nift is pretty sure she wasn't raped. Didn't anybody know who she was screwing?"

"Nobody we've found so far," Quinn said. "She might have had some kind of secret relationship."

"A married man?"

"Or somebody where she worked. The guy who runs the place and his employees don't seem likely. But she'd pretend not to know a customer who was a lover. Her boss had a strict policy of not mixing pleasure with business, and that kind of affair might have caused her to lose her job."

"Love will find a way," Renz said. "You checking on the diner's regular customers?"

"We're on it," Quinn said, deciding not to go into detail with Renz.

"It's worth pursuing," Renz said. "Way to go about that is to check and see if any of the regulars suddenly stopped eating there, so if he was banging Joyce House they could keep it a secret."

"Good idea."

"How's our girl Addie Price working out?" Renz asked.

"Fine. She knows her job."

"She came highly recommended. And she's media savvy, too. Listen close to her if she has ideas on how to handle the wolves."

"Wolves like Cindy Sellers?"

"I've got that wolf domesticated," Renz said.

Quinn almost laughed into the phone. He turned his head so Renz wouldn't hear.

"Partly, anyway." Renz might have heard something. "Keep me up on things, Quinn."

Quinn said that he would, and they ended the conversation.

Quinn filled everyone in on what Renz had told him about the postmortem and CSU findings.

"We got diddly shit," Vitali said.

"Except for the dog-in-the-night angle," Fedderman said. "That one's worth pursuing."

"That's what Renz said," Quinn told him.

"Now I am worried," Fedderman said.

Two hours later, Fedderman dropped a sheet of copy paper on Quinn's desk. "That dog in the night didn't hunt. The owner and employees said there were three regular customers that recently stopped coming into the diner where Joyce House worked. Two were women. We did an Identi-Kit on the third."

Quinn studied the image the police artist had created from voice description. An average-looking man, short haircut, firm chin, neither too fat nor too thin.

"Make a good spy, wouldn't he?" Fedderman said.

"Yeah. He look familiar to you?"

"Uh-huh. But he's got one of those faces."

"I guess that's it," Quinn said.

"No way to trace him from the diner," Fedderman said. "Mr. Nobody."

"Maybe he planned it that way."

"But probably he's just a guy," Fedderman said. "Mighta found a hair in his food and started eating someplace else. Could happen to anyone."

"So could what happened to Joyce House."

Quinn seated himself at his desk in his den that evening. He already had a cigar burning, and was carrying a glass containing Famous Grouse over ice with a splash of water. He was in his socks, and his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down and untucked. Comfortable.

When he was settled, he slid open the desk's middle drawer and withdrew his yellow legal pad. He didn't see a pen, so he picked up a reasonably sharp pencil that had toothmarks and a worn-down eraser. He noticed it was the exact yellow as the legal pad.

Beneath (Trust no one.) he began to write in his sloppy but legible hand: Enter Addie Price. Renz spy? Enter Erin Keller. Sees Chrissie photo-not Chrissie. Our Chrissie not even related to Tiffany. Two Chrissies missing now. Fake Chrissie and real one. Joyce House body found. Shadow woman appears again at crime scene.

Quinn dropped the pencil and leaned back, studying the legal pad. It told him nothing, but it raised an uneasy feeling. There was a lot about this case that wasn't right. Nothing fully formed in his mind yet, but not right. He couldn't quite grasp the solution to the puzzle, but it was there ahead of him. He could sense its amorphous presence even if he couldn't see it.

He concentrated on his cigar and scotch and felt oddly satisfied. He was getting somewhere, even if he wasn't sure where.

It had to be soon. A person could wait only so long, could only fight off such a compulsion so long. Not to give in to it was to be devoured by it. He'd never dreamed it could be like this, that the need could come on so suddenly and be so powerful.

The bothersome thing was that the times, the women, were coming closer together and without predictable intervals. Predictable intervals made it easier to plan. To be in control.

Control was what it was all about. Control bestowed by destiny. Once begun, if it was meant to happen, it would.

Not to give in to it was to be devoured by it.

Joyce House had been the best. She'd struggled with her fate enough to make it interesting, to satisfy the need, but not so much as to make things truly difficult and perhaps more dangerous.

The change in her eyes hadn't occurred too soon, and when it came it was complete. She was already dead and knew it. All that was necessary then was the acting out, and she readily gave herself up to that. She was ready to end it, to end herself, to end the future, past, and present, and to begin the forever.

Perhaps because Joyce had been so satisfying, the need was back sooner than anticipated. Not a demon fully formed, but forming.

Joyce's image played on the screen of the mind, her eyes when she saw the knife and understood the inevitability of the blade, when she felt the caressing point of the blade, the course of the blade.

The blade.

Her eyes.

Her eyes.

It had to be soon.