Mister X

52

"The killer is moving up in the world," Fedderman said.

Vitali had called and woken Quinn a few minutes past midnight with the address of the latest Carver victim, Lilly Branston. It was in a towering condo development on Park Avenue. The building was a pre-war honey, with a four-story granite facade topped by a tan brick and ornate pale stone structure thrust into the night sky. There was the usual cluster of radio cars, unmarkeds, and emergency vehicles outside, parked at crazy angles so it looked as if they'd all arrived at once and a massive collision had been barely averted.

Quinn nodded hello to a uniformed officer he knew, but used his ID to enter the lobby with Fedderman.

Impressive, the lobby. Cooler than the night. Pink-veined beige marble, brown plush carpeting, and polished copper elevator doors.

"A place like this," Fedderman said, "there's gotta be a doorman."

"There is. Sal said he gets off at ten. The doorman claims he saw the victim leave by herself about six. Didn't see her return."

"Maybe she met her killer and brought him back to her place after ten."

"Maybe the killer knew it was safe after ten," Quinn said, "and came calling on his own." He glanced up and around. "Any security cameras covering the entrance?"

"Yeah, but they're live, and nobody was watching the monitors."

Quinn flexed his jaw muscles and nodded.

Mishkin was standing by one of the elevators. His rumpled brown suit appeared too large for him. His eyes were pools of sadness. Even his bushy mustache seemed to droop a little, or maybe it was the mentholated cream caught in it.

"You look tired, Harold," Fedderman said.

"Trying to find some meaning in slaughter wears a person down," Mishkin said. "She's on eighteen." He pressed the elevator's up button. "This one had a lot to live for. Tragic…"

It was well past midnight, and they were the only ones in the elevator. No one said anything as it ascended to the murder floor. Rising to hell-it didn't feel right.

As they stepped from the elevator on eighteen, Quinn noticed an open door down the hall. A uniformed cop stood nearby, and bright light from inside the apartment cast faint moving shadows over the carpeted hall outside the door. Just beyond the open door was a small upholstered bench, and alongside it a tall stone urn with brown artificial pampas grass protruding from it.

A man about twenty who would always look about twenty at a glance sat slumped on the bench. He was wearing seriously faded and patched jeans, a fresh-looking untucked white shirt with vertical green stripes, and moccasins without socks. His straight brown hair was a tangle that might or might not have been an effort at style. He was staring at the floor with the intensity of a man watching an ant farm.

"That's Stephen Elsinger," Mishkin said. "He's the kid who called nine-one-one. Saw some of what happened through the victim's window. Trust fund baby, lives over on Lexington."

"That's in the next block," Quinn said.

"Stephen's got a powerful telescope," Mishkin said. "He was in the habit of observing the victim."

"Spying on her."

"Stephen wouldn't put it exactly that way, but yeah. She was masturbation material, is my impression."

Quinn liked the sound of this. "He saw her murdered?"

"Not exactly."

Quinn merely grunted, deciding to be patient while the story of what had happened here unfolded.

When they entered the bedroom and Quinn saw the victim, he knew what Mishkin had meant when he said she'd had a lot to live for. Lilly Branston's address suggested she had plenty of money, and despite the gape-mouthed expression of horror on her face, she must have been beautiful. Quinn thought she was a bit older than the other victims, maybe even in her forties. But it was difficult to judge, with her staring eyes and the rictus of her mouth from which her panties, now crumpled on the pillow beside her head, had been removed by the assistant M.E. The attending examiner wasn't Nift this time, but a middle-aged woman who was tall and storklike yet had innumerable chins. Quinn knew her slightly and thought her name was Norma. She was treating the victim's horribly abused body with a cold precision and professionalism, through which now and then glimmered compassion and respect. So unlike her boss.

Quinn showed her his ID, which had his name on it, rather than the NYPD shield Renz had supplied.

"I'm Norma," the woman said. She had a high, nasal voice. "I know you from the Kraft case some years back."

"Ah, yes. Where's Nift?"

"You miss Dr. Nift?"

Quinn smiled. "Like a bad case of shingles."

"You know him, then," Norma said. "Dr. Nift is home in bed, and he won't meet Ms. Branston till well after sunrise."

"Seniority," Quinn said.

"Being the boss."

"Being a prick," Fedderman said.

Norma glanced at him, but nothing changed in her expression. She seemed a nice, if authoritative, woman and looked as if she should be principal of a school where the girls wore uniforms, instead of poking around a dead body.

Sal Vitali took a few steps into the bedroom. "Where's Pearl?"

"I decided to let her sleep," Quinn said. "Addie, too. That way we won't be bumping into each other like zombies tomorrow morning."

He propped his fists on his hips and looked closely at the victim. She was nude and had been bound with strips of torn sheet. Her nipples had been removed. A glaring X about twelve inches long was carved between her breasts. She'd suffered a terrible ear-to-ear slash, creating what looked like a horrible, greedy mouth straight out of a nightmare.

Then Quinn noticed something that made the nightmare more poignant and terrible.

He pointed to the white flower tucked in her tangled hair just above her left ear. "Was that there when they found her?"

"Yeah," Norma said. "'Case you're wondering, it's a lily."

"I knew that," Fedderman said.

Norma glanced at him skeptically and continued to pick and probe.

"Our killer likes to pun," Fedderman said.

Norma said, "I don't concern myself with that kinda thing."

"Nift would," Quinn said. "He likes to play detective."

Norma shrugged. "Play is the operative word."

There was plenty of spilled blood, but it had the same controlled look as that of the earlier victims. The killer had been deft and knew how and how much they were going to bleed, and how to avoid the blood as much as possible.

"Do you think the killer might have some kind of medical background, the way he seems able to predict and avoid arterial blood?" Quinn asked Norma.

"Not necessarily," she said. "Some reading, and of course practice, and it would be pretty simple to attain a butcher's skill."

"But he'd get some blood on him."

"It would seem inevitable."

"Looks like he washed up in the bathroom when he was done," Sal said. "Crime scene unit's gonna check the basin and shower drains. What they found with all their dusting for prints were mostly glove smudges, and a lot of the apartment looks like it's been wiped."

"They won't find any of the killer's blood or hair in the drain or anywhere else," Fedderman said. "He doesn't leave DNA, probably showers with a cap and maybe has his pubic hair shaved, the way some of these sickos do. And he's careful to be the cutter rather than the cuttee."

"The cuttee's name is confirmed as Lillian Maria Branston," Sal said. "Thirty-eight years old. A real estate agent-high-end stuff, judging by this place. Business cards say she was with the Willman Group."

Quinn had heard of the Willman Group. It was one of the largest and most successful real estate agencies in the city. And, as Vitali had said, it worked the high end of the market. And here they were on Park Avenue. Lilly Branston must have done okay.

"Keep one of her cards, Sal. We can check with the agency tomorrow." He smiled incongruously but warmly and turned his full attention to Norma. "Okay, dear, what've we got so far?"

Norma met his charm offensive with a meaningless smile, as if someone had reminded her of something remotely humorous that had happened years ago. "Body temperature puts the approximate time of death at about an hour ago. Maybe earlier."

"Good Christ," Fedderman said.

Quinn knew what he meant. It was as if they might be able to catch up with the killer if they hurried.

So close…

"You'll understand when I tell you how the squeal came in," Sal said.

Quinn might not have heard him. He was staring at the body with his arms crossed. The compression of time between the murder and the discovery of the body gave the impression they'd come close to nailing the killer, but of course it was only an impression. Time wasn't distance, and distance didn't mean much in Manhattan anyway. The sicko might be sitting in some all-night diner a few blocks away now, sipping coffee and basking in recent memories.

"Sexual penetration?" Quinn asked Norma.

"Thanks, but I'm gonna have to refuse," Norma said, deadpan. "As for the victim, there are no signs of sexual penetration. Nothing in the way of bruises. If there was any sort of sex, it was possibly consensual. As for the rest of it…" She waved a latex-gloved hand to take in the mutilated corpse.

"Nonconsensual," Quinn said.

"Murder usually is," Norma said.

Quinn didn't mind her short manner. She simply carried a cop's defensive humor in her black bag, along with her other medical supplies.

"We get her to the morgue and we can tell you a lot more," Norma said. "What she had for dinner, drug or alcohol content in her blood, precise cause of death…those kinda things. You know, clues."

"'We' would be Nift?"

"Yeah, these are his cases. Instructions are that everything with these kinds of injuries goes through him."

"Carver victims."

"I would be assuming," Norma said, and began to gather her stainless steel instruments to place them in a sealed container and return them to her medical case. Every move was practiced and very businesslike.

The police photographer, a red-faced guy named Willis, poked his head in the door. He was wearing a wide grin. "Anything else in here I should shoot?" he asked, knowing he was teeing it up for someone.

Norma closed her bag and sighed, but shook her head no.

"I admire your restraint," Quinn said.

"I'm not built so sexy without it," Norma said. "Good night, good morning. Whatever the hell it is."

She left without looking back at any of them.

Quinn said, "Let's go talk to Stephen. See if he knows some jokes, since we're losing Norma."

Everyone other than Lilly Branston filed from the bedroom.

Nobody was smiling. Once again, comedy had not quite fended off horror.

On the way out of the apartment, Quinn told a paramedic eating a sandwich that it was okay now to remove the body.

The paramedic had removed a lot of bodies from a lot of crime and accident scenes, and had somehow found a way beyond tasteless humor to cope. He simply nodded and continued to chew.