Night kills

50

Hettie had left, and Quinn was standing in the center of Ruth Malpass's apartment, slowly looking around, when Pearl came in.

"Anything from the neighbors?" he asked.

"Nothing useful. They all liked Ruth. She'd been seen coming and going with a man now and then. Nobody steady. Nobody lately. She was friendly-I heard the word sweet a lot-but pretty much kept to herself." Pearl glanced around the apartment. "Anything here?"

"Nothing unusual or helpful. Just like on her computer."

"Nobbler had it first. You think we saw everything that was on it?"

"You watched the file transfer. The tech whiz seem okay?"

"Yeah. Seemed."

"Then we probably got it all," Quinn said. "Nobbler'd be taking a hell of a risk tampering with that kind of evidence. And it'd take somebody who really knew computers to be sure whatever was deleted was really and truly gone from the disk for good. You know how it works."

"Yeah. E-mail is forever."

They both turned when they heard the door open.

Fedderman. He looked tired, and his brown suit was even more wrinkled than usual. He'd canvassed the top floors, while Pearl had worked the ones below. He didn't look happy.

"Any luck?" Quinn asked.

Fedderman shook his head.

"Probably not except maybe for the woman living right in the next unit, a loft apartment just like this one. Name's Emma McKenna. Real nice. Pretty enough to be an actress."

"She probably is an actress," Quinn said. "What did you learn from her."

"She was a good friend of Ruth's. According to her, they kind of looked out for one another. She said Ruth phoned her on what must have been the day she died and left a message on her machine. Said it probably wouldn't happen, but if a guy named Vlad came around looking for her, tell him he just missed her and get his phone number." Fedderman shrugged. "Emma didn't know anyone named Vlad and said Ruth never mentioned a Vlad before the phone message. So it probably means nothing."

Pearl said, "Holy Christ!"

Fedderman looked at her in surprise. "Huh?"

Quinn and Pearl both stared at him.

"What?" Fedderman asked.

Quinn said, "Don't you watch The History Channel?"

After explaining to Fedderman about Vlad the Impaler, they set to work doing a search of the names Vlad and Vladimir, using phone directories at first, then moving on to their computers.

In the five boroughs of New York City, there were a surprising number of Vlads and Vladimirs. The Vlads who showed up in the various criminal databases were for one reason or another unlikely suspects. One, who'd at first seemed a possibility, was in the Russian Mafia and had been killed last year in New Jersey.

Almost certainly the killer-if Vlad was the killer-wouldn't have used his real name. Still it was something that should be checked. Every ten years or so, something like this paid off. The drudge work of detection. Renz assigned a young cop named Nevins, fresh out of the academy, to do more extensive checking. He seemed enthusiastic.

Pearl stayed behind and helped Nevins, out of pity, while Quinn and Fedderman left the office to look over the vacant apartment Pearl had seen the new Madeline leaving.

Just in case she hadn't found what she might have gone there to retrieve.

"Happy hunting," Nevins said, as they went out the door.

Pearl rolled her eyes.