Mister X

48

"We saw her again," Fedderman said, when everyone had reported back to the office. This was the time for the evening summing-up and for setting the strategy for the next day.

Dusk was beginning to envelop the city, and no one had bothered to switch on the overhead fluorescent fixtures as one by one the desk lamps were turned on. The light in the office was less official and revealing in the muted illumination. It had a shadowed yellow cast that created soft side lighting. Maybe it was because of the concealing and flattering lighting that the mood was more relaxed.

"Her being our shadow woman?" Quinn asked.

"Right. Pearl and I both saw her just after you left to drive back here. She was standing across the street again, near where she was last time. Had her arms crossed, the way she does. Just then one of those two-piece buses like short trains went past, and when we could see across the street again, she was gone. But she'd been there, watching."

Watching what? Quinn wondered. The three of them, Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman, had simply stayed in Joyce House's apartment building most of the time, when they weren't visiting witnesses in surrounding buildings to clear up inconsistent statements regarding the time leading up to and including House's murder. Nothing useful had been learned, other than additional confirmation that any two people could see or hear the same things quite differently.

"So did you go after her?" Mishkin asked Fedderman.

"Pearl did, but it wasn't much use. She'd had plenty of time to lose herself in all the traffic and people headed home from work."

"It looked like she was wearing the same gray outfit," Pearl said. "Gray sweats, and a blue baseball cap worn low over her eyes."

"Yankees cap?" Vitali asked.

"Could have been Mets," Pearl said. "They're both blue." She felt like adding that if they knew which team the woman rooted for, they could search the ballpark next time there was a home game. But she knew Vitali wasn't an easy target for sarcasm like Fedderman. The gravelly voiced little bastard would catch on to what Pearl was doing and maybe take offense. Vitali was laid-back, but he could also bite back.

Addie, who'd worked a computer and answered the phones in the office all day, said, "There are lots of blue ball caps floating around that aren't connected to sports teams. Maybe it was even one of those generic caps you buy at sidewalk sales. The kind that come straight from where they're made and haven't been stenciled or embroidered with anything yet. A lot of them are from China."

Pearl thought, We're really zeroing in on this cap. Stick to profiling, toots.

Quinn was looking at Pearl, maybe in a cautioning way. Or maybe he was still pissed because of her engagement to Yancy. Pearl hadn't meant to hurt his fragile male ego, and when was the last time he'd proposed marriage to her?

"What about the missing Chrissies?" Quinn asked Sal and Harold.

"I'm afraid they're still missing," Harold said. "The phony Chrissie's hotel room was long ago cleaned and has had two guests stay there since her disappearance. Any DNA evidence we gathered wouldn't tell us much, even if there happened to be any after the maids did their spit-and-polish work."

"Our assumed actual Chrissie was never even in New York, for all we know," Sal said. "We checked with her hometown police and sheriff's department. There's nothing on her, no sheet, no friends or neighbors who say anything negative or revealing about her-or about her mother, for that matter."

"What about the father?" Pearl asked.

"Long gone after the divorce. You know how it works. Tiffany's death tore up the family. There was no way it could survive intact. The father was a sales rep for an auto parts company and moved to Detroit."

Detroit, Pearl thought. Where Geraldine Knott was attacked years ago by a man who was probably the Carver. Where Addie Price was also attacked, possibly by the same man, then fought for her accreditation, worked as a profiler, and went on to a career as a local media talking head. A bit of a coincidence.

Pearl filed the information away in the back of her mind.

Quinn stood up behind his desk and stretched, clenching and unclenching his powerful hands as if to make sure they still worked. "We'll do legwork again tomorrow," he said, "and see what, if anything, comes of it. Pearl and Feds can go back to House's neighborhood and haunt it, see if our shadow woman turns up again. Maybe even find out who she is and what she wants."

"It'll probably be in tomorrow's City Beat that she was spotted across the street from where Joyce House was murdered, and then disappeared again," Pearl said. She shot a look Addie's way, letting Addie know she was under suspicion, at least as far as Pearl was concerned. Addie had learned Pearl's game and ignored her.

"Maybe I'll call Cindy Sellers and tell her about the latest shadow woman sighting," Quinn said. "It might shake something loose out there. Could be that somebody else in the neighborhood saw our mystery woman and knows who she is."

"Could be," Pearl agreed.

And the killer is going to shoot himself outside 1 Police Plaza and leave a confession.

"So we sleep on it," Quinn said.

Everyone was ready for that. Chairs groaned. Notebooks snapped shut. Desk lamps began winking out, and someone switched on the fluorescents for the last one out the door to switch off.

Quinn stayed behind so he'd be the last to leave. Pearl was next to last. He watched her go out the door without looking back, not bothering to say good night.

She was no doubt irked by his reference to Cindy Sellers. Quinn couldn't understand why. They all knew what kind of journalist Sellers was, and that she had informants in the NYPD. Informants everywhere, in fact.

Quinn watched Pearl walk past outside the window that looked out on West Seventy-ninth Street. In the illumination from headlights and the nearby streetlight, her expression was serious and her dark eyes were trained straight ahead. The breeze blew a lock of raven-black hair across her forehead, and she instantly brushed it aside. Then she was out of sight.

He sat feeling the loss of her presence like a dull ache.

They were in business together, so Pearl would be in his life as long as that lasted. In his life during their working hours, anyway.

For now, he'd settle for that because he had no choice.

But when Pearl became Mrs. Yancy Taggart, would she continue with the agency? Would she feel the same drive she and Quinn felt now?

Or would she no longer need the hunt? Would she no longer share the feeling that at least some of what was wrong with this screwed-up, dangerous, and unfair world had to be set right, and that for some reason accomplishing that was their responsibility?

Would Mrs. Yancy Taggart think that way?

Quinn knew it was possible, even likely, that someday soon Pearl would walk out of his life for good.

On a practical level he should be able to live with that, but he had no idea how.