Mister X

83

Cindy Sellers's throat was dry. So fascinated was she by Quinn and Addie Price's conversation that she'd almost forgotten to breathe.

As she listened to the recording from the digital micro-recorder she'd secretly planted in Quinn's apartment, she knew she had a major story, the kind that could make a career. Of course it had been obtained unethically, not to mention illegally, but her standing as a journalist should prevent her from having to reveal her source.

Like Pearl, Sellers had researched Addie Price and found a false record of her birth.

Unlike Pearl, she'd continued her research and discovered the real reason; the reason for both name changes. And the reason why the Carver inexplicably stopped his attack on Geraldine Knott in Detroit. Why her assailant couldn't bring himself to kill Geraldine.

Geraldine wasn't Geraldine.

Not even close.

The question now, in Sellers's mind and balanced in her conscience, was whether she should reveal the recorded conversation she'd just heard.

She searched her soul for almost ten seconds before deciding to phone in the story.

Addie Price had missed her flight, so the next day Quinn drove her to Kennedy. They had a good-bye drink in an airport bar before walking to the security checkpoint.

They shook hands, and then Addie impulsively kissed Quinn's cheek and turned away to join the security line. She didn't look back at Quinn. He didn't look back at her.

Back in his apartment, Quinn sat at his desk, fired up a cigar, and got out his yellow legal pad.

He found a stubby yellow pencil.

Beneath Computer nerd's software program, seven names, he wrote: Pearl attacked, Yancy killed. Lisa Bolt checks herself out of hospital. Edward Keller agrees to come to NYC. Lisa Bolt says Keller is in NYC to kill Chrissie so he can keep past hidden. Keller not in hotel as agreed. Pearl finds Lisa Bolt badly beaten by Keller. Lisa gives police address she gave to Keller. All hell. Keller, Chrissie die.

Quinn leaned back and surveyed the entire page. Something was still wrong. It wasn't anything in his notes.

There was something missing.

He realized what just as the phone rang, startling him out of his reverie. As he lifted the receiver, he saw on caller ID that Renz was on the line.

"I thought you oughta know," Renz said, "the Detroit cops found a hidden room in Keller's basement in Detroit. There was a freezer there, with plastic bags containing guess what?"

"Grisly souvenirs," Quinn said.

"What looked like shredded flesh," Renz said. "Each bag was labeled. We're waiting for DNA, but blood type and other forensics make it just about certain the labels are correct and what we've got are the severed nipples of all the Carver victims up to and including Tiffany Keller."

"He killed his own daughter."

"People do that kinda thing, Quinn. Especially under the circumstances. She was a liability."

"Yeah. Look at the good it did him."

"He was a sicko," Renz said. "End of story."

"I guess you're right, Harley."

"Time for you to stop guessing, Quinn. Get drunk and get laid, if you're not too old to get it up, and put this one away."

"I'll do that, Harley. Maybe not all of it."

Quinn hung up.

He turned his attention back to the legal pad, thinking back on his conversation with Renz.

…up to and including Tiffany Keller.

The souvenirs in Keller's freezer in Detroit were all older than five years, stopping with the macabre reminders of Tiffany.

Where were the missing body parts from the later victims?

If Keller had resumed his activities as the Carver, why wouldn't he have resumed his old M.O.? His hotel room, his belongings, had all been thoroughly searched. No body parts.

If Chrissie had committed the later murders and taken the nipples as souvenirs, which seemed unlikely, where were they? Had she simply removed them so she could emulate the Carver's M.O. and then disposed of them?

That was the most likely thing, Quinn decided. And if they hadn't been destroyed, actually finding them, proving what he thought to be true, would be too much of a long shot, especially if it meant reopening a case virtually everyone wanted to stay closed. And of course the courts would be in the position of having to prove that Keller and Chrissie hadn't murdered anyone after Tiffany's death. Not easy to do, since both were dead.

So the case would remain closed. Everyone involved who was still alive would have to live with that.

Quinn used the phone in his den to call Pearl's apartment.

She didn't answer, but he sat for a while and let her phone ring.

Then he abruptly hung up. He decided the loneliest sound in the world was an unanswered phone after the fifth ring.

Miles above the earth, Addie Price soared with her eyes closed. She dreamed about a sultry night and a knife blade held tightly by pinched fingers close to the point so the cuts would be shallow and seem tentative. There was a gray homeless woman in the dream, her eyes wide and glittering with horror, her sagging breasts revealed…the snick of blade nicking bone, carving flesh. Human flesh, so fragile…so temporary.

Human flesh…first a trickle of blood, then the deluge. The others-

The plane hit an air pocket, and Addie awakened, glanced about, realized where she was, and smiled.

Human flesh, so fragile…it had to be packed carefully in ice in order to be shipped.

That evening, in a Holifield, Ohio, gin mill, Jerry Grantland's mother Miriam, who was also the mother of Geraldine Knott, Loren Ensam, Gerald Lone, and Addie Price, read the New York papers, then buried her head in her arms and wept.

At the same time in New York, Elana Dare sat alone at an Upper East Side restaurant table, trying to ignore the stares of the other diners, who by this time had to know she'd been stood up. Her second cocktail, a prop to mitigate her embarrassment, sat before her on a damp paper napkin on the table. Between sips of what was now melted ice, she was desperately using her cell phone to call Gerald Lone.

His phone rang and rang.