Night kills

71

Palmer Stone had showered and was shaving, preparing to leave for the office, when he noticed the news was on the small-screen TV in his bathroom. A beautiful and sincere blond anchorwoman was talking about a woman who'd been arrested in Louisiana, and was thought to be the confederate of the two men who'd been charged with murdering Tom Coulter and with possession and distribution of methamphetamine.

Because of Coulter's fortunate death and the assumption that he'd been the Torso Murderer, Stone had been following the news reports on him with some interest. He'd read about the woman who'd been with the two men charged with murdering Coulter, and knew something about her. A woman like that knew how to take care of herself. Stone thought she'd gotten away clean. Well, not clean, but away.

Obviously, she hadn't.

The mug shot of a distraught-looking woman with scraggly brown hair was shown on the tiny flat-panel screen. She had dark and desperate eyes, attractive features, and was staring at the screen with her lips parted as if she were about to speak. Stone thought there was something about her reminiscent of trailer parks, cheap beauty shops, and tattoos in unmentionable places.

"Twenty-year-old Cathy Lee Aiken resisted arrest," the anchorwoman was saying, "and after a fierce gun battle with police, in which, thankfully, no one was killed or injured, she was taken kicking and screaming into custody. Police regard her as a valuable source of information about the recent whereabouts of fugitive Tom Coulter, the alleged Torso Murderer, and what led to the murder of Coulter himself by suspects Joe Ray Jeffers and Juan Adamson, allegedly. It's reported that Aiken had been living with the two alleged killers in what some people are said to be describing as a menage a trois." She lowered her gaze and flipped a page that had been invisible until she lifted it to camera level, then looked back up and smiled. "They say dogs can't talk, but in Spangler, Idaho-"

Stone used the remote to switch off the TV and stood holding the remote for a while, still aimed like a gun at the blank screen.

The Aiken woman might know something about Coulter that would preclude him from being the Torso Murderer. Maybe she and Coulter were lovers, and he'd been with her in some sleazy motel, or wherever she might live, at the times of some E-Bliss.org clients' deaths and virtual rebirths. The torsos that so confounded the police couldn't be attributed to him.

Stone laid down the remote, which had a dab of shaving cream on it, and resumed leveling his sideburns. He was uneasy about the arrest of the woman in Louisiana. The threat wasn't yet clearly defined, but it was there, all right. She looked terrified in her mug shot. She looked like the sort who might scare, who might talk and talk.

On the other hand, Cathy Lee Aiken's credibility wasn't the best. She was a prostitute-or at least a woman of questionable morality-and an accessory to murder. Not to mention her probable involvement in an illegal methamphetamine operation. Why should anything she say be taken as gospel?

The law demanded facts, not the frantic babbling of a woman in custody and charged with committing serious crimes herself.

But the image of Cathy Lee Aiken was still in his mind.

Cheap whore! No one will believe you. You'll lump the truth in with your lies, and after a while no one will listen.

Still, when she talked, it would mean the police would double their efforts to solve the Torso Murders, an investigation that might lead to the company-his company-that he'd raised from an idea into a profit machine not even yet running at full speed and power. Stone felt the added pressure like a wedge of lead in his gut.

He nicked himself and winced in the mirror. He was shaving sloppily. As Victor had been shaving recently.

Stress could do that to a person.

Quinn and Renz were in Renz's office at One Police Plaza. It was too warm in the office. These days it almost always was. Quinn was beginning to think Renz liked it that way. Renz was taking medication for his blood pressure. Maybe that had something to do with it. And there was a stronger than usual smell of cigar smoke. Renz's secret vice. Something he and Quinn had in common.

"This woman the Louisiana cops have in custody," Renz said. "They say she's talking up a storm. Nailing those yokels who killed Coulter to the cross."

"Was she in on it?" Quinn asked.

"Looks that way. That's why she's running off at the mouth. I talked by phone to a state police lieutenant down there a couple of hours ago. He says they can't shut her up."

"They get that way sometimes when they're both scared and guilty," Quinn said.

"That one's both. And she opened fire with a revolver on a bunch of state police. That's enough to put her behind walls where they don't make cupcakes. I say let her blab. I love a motormouth suspect."

"She say Coulter was murdered for that stolen truck he was driving?"

"No," Renz said. "He actually wanted to leave them the newer truck and take their old rust bucket because it wouldn't draw attention and it'd be harder to trace. And of course the yokels wouldn't report it as stolen. That mighta worked, but he also demanded money. The two yokels were dealing meth. Coulter tried to hold them up. Made out like he was Jesse James or something, she said. The yokels didn't like it. She said one of them shot Coulter, and then later they drove him to a spot near the highway and dumped his body. They kept the truck, though, had it repainted and got it a junkyard title."

"That truck's movements are gonna be traced back to when Coulter stole it," Quinn said. "People will remember it and Coulter. Maybe think they remember, whether they saw them or not. Coulter will have an alibi for at least one, and probably more, of the Torso Murders."

"Aiken woman's already saying he spent time hanging around some roadhouse in Louisiana. It places him down there at the time of the most recent Torso killing." Renz pressed his temples with his forefingers, as if he had a bad headache. "Media pricks aren't gonna like it that we put them on the wrong road."

"They had fun while it lasted," Quinn said.

"Puts the pressure back on E-Bliss, too," Renz said. "That could be good or bad."

Quinn knew he was right. Once it got out that Coulter couldn't be the Torso Murderer, E-Bliss.org had nothing to lose by resuming operations. The company would also know that the investigation into the Torso Murders would heat up again. He made a mental note to call Pearl and tell her to stick as close as possible to Jill Clark.

Renz's phone line blinked and he picked up. Someone calling on his direct line. He swiveled his chair so his back was to Quinn. Not that Quinn couldn't hear him. And not that it mattered, because the caller did most of the talking.

When Renz had finished the conversation and swiveled around to face Quinn again, he hung up the phone and said, "That was my new best friend, Lieutenant Balamore, in Louisiana. He tells me all three suspects are talking now, accusing each other of every crime ever committed. It's a feast of information. Don't they have sense enough to lawyer up?"

"I don't know. What's Balamore say?"

"He says they don't. They don't have an average IQ between the three of them. But in this day and age, with Law amp; Order reruns playing around the clock on TV, how can anybody not know to lawyer up?"

Quinn simply shook his head.

"Law and order," Renz said. "As if they go together."

But Quinn did sense a cosmic mechanism beginning to shift at the core of events. An old cop's instinct feeling imbalance and movement without yet quite knowing what it all meant, where the momentum would take them.

It was often that way before the dominoes started to fall.

Stone worked late in his office. Not that he actually had work to do. He thought that probably the stress was getting to him. Or was it that he actually felt more at home here, in his place of business?

More and more lately, his office seemed a sanctuary from the encroaching menace of Quinn and his detectives. He'd never met Quinn, but he'd met other Quinns, men who simply wouldn't quit, who in another era would have been hunters of the most dangerous game. Who were, in fact, in this era hunters of the most dangerous game. But Palmer Stone didn't feel dangerous. He was no predator. He felt more like prey being run to ground.

Never for a second had Quinn believed Coulter was the Torso Murderer.

Stone sat behind his desk and passed his fingertips over the fine mahogany finish. Wood, the warmth and solidity of it, was reassuring. Here behind his desk he used to feel as if he could solve any problem, surmount any obstacle. It was different now. Quinn had made it different.

He used the remote to switch on his flat-panel TV mounted on the opposite wall. It was tuned to the financial channel. He switched it to the news.

There was the now familiar mug shot of Cathy Lee Aiken.

The TV went to split screen and in contrast to the disheveled and frantic-looking Cathy Lee was the same impeccably groomed blond anchorwoman who had first broken the news to Stone about the confederate of Coulter's killers being apprehended.

"Authorities say Cathy Lee Aiken is talking," the anchorwoman proclaimed, as Stone turned up the volume. "And talking and talking and talking. Her two partners in crime, allegedly, are also said to be cooperating with police. More and more doubt is accumulating about the late Tom Coulter actually being the man who committed the Torso Murders." The camera zoomed in on perfect pale features grown suddenly appalled. "Which means, of course-"

Stone pressed the red button on the remote and watched the beautiful bearer of bad news fade with her voice into nothingness.

Right now, nothingness seemed like a welcome state of being.

Palmer Stone was alone again in his office. Alone with his thoughts and not liking them.

The police, Quinn and his minions, were relentlessly tightening the noose. Despite the daily security sweep Stone conducted in his office, he couldn't be sure it wasn't bugged. Technology these days quickly overwhelmed technology, like a beast that kept devouring itself.

Technology, the science that made E-Bliss.org possible, had turned against Stone.

Victor was on his assignment to delete Jill Clark. But despite Stone's reassurances to Victor, Stone knew the Clark woman's cloying best friend, Jewel, might pose a problem.

The new Madeline Scott, Maria Sanchez, was like a hand grenade waiting to explode. Should she also be deleted? She was a special case, a grave danger. But E-Bliss.org had never, ever, deleted a special client. It was a violation of Stone's business ethics.

Then there was Victor. Another worry. Victor, who seemed to be sinking into some kind of degeneracy and sadism. His collection of literature on Vlad the Impaler, his apparent state of nervousness that always lay just beneath the surface. It was all very disturbing. And Gloria was no longer around to control Victor. For all Stone knew, Gloria might never come out of her coma.

And if she did regain consciousness, would she have all her mental faculties? Would she know what not to say if authorities questioned her?

The business, Stone's precious business, was unraveling like the people who were at its heart.

It was all so hopeless, so out of control. Stone did feel like a cornered prey animal docilely waiting for the predator's jaws to close.

He buried his face in his hands, his fingers slowly becoming claws leaving red indentations on his forehead and around his eyes.

He began to sob.

When finally he stopped and was calm again, his expression was blank. He had obviously made up his mind about something.

He opened a bottom desk drawer and reached inside.