Pulse

24

T here wasn’t much pain if she kept her little toe scrunched up.

Pearl was striding along West Seventy-ninth Street toward the office, wearing her New Balance jogging shoes. They were her most comfortable shoes for walking, but her left sock had bunched up and might be causing a blister. She figured she didn’t have far to go, so the hell with it.

She had spent much of the day verifying Louis Gainer’s alibi for the night of Ann Spellman’s murder. Gainer’s fiancee had been aware of his relationship with Spellman, and she described it as “long over.” Pearl let that one pass. It looked like Gainer was innocent, so why screw up a marriage before it even started?

Restaurant receipts and witness statements indicated that Gainer and his fiancee were where he’d said they’d been, with the people he’d named. And the old college friend Gainer had run into in the theater lobby at the approximate time of the murder described their meeting the same way Gainer had. The play they’d attended was titled Chance Encounter. Gainer wouldn’t have chosen that one to lie about. Unless he had a dangerous sense of humor, or no sense of humor at all.

If anything, Gainer was too alibied up for the night of Spellman’s torture and murder. Something Pearl would keep in mind.

Does this job make you cynical, or what?

Pearl’s cell phone, clipped to her belt beneath her light linen blazer, came to life and instinctively her hand moved toward it.

Then paused.

Pearl had a new phone that enabled the use of individual ring tones to identify callers. She stopped walking as she heard the musical strains of “You Talk Too Much,” Joe Jones’s old rhythm-and-blues hit from the sixties. When she looked at the phone’s caller ID, sure enough, she saw Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. Where her mother lived, and called from at the most inopportune times.

Not that this was one of those times. But still…

While she was debating whether to take the call, the phone fell silent.

Her mind had been made up for her. She told herself she’d been about to answer, even though she didn’t feel like hearing her mother harangue her for everything from her job to not being married, or for being married to her job.

She decided she really didn’t want to talk with her mother-or, rather, listen to her-even though she had a spare moment.

Pearl smiled. There was nothing like being honest with oneself.

No doubt her mother had left a message. She’d listen to it later.

As she clipped the phone back on her belt-turned off, just in case-the movement of her head caused her to glance behind her.

A tickle moved up her spine. Subtle, but she recognized it.

Something was wrong. She scanned the block she’d been walking along. Nothing seemed unusual. Yet in her initial glance, something hadn’t been right. She knew it. Like many cops with a talent for tailing people, she had a talent for knowing when someone was tailing her.

There!

A woman, slim, average height, wearing yellow, one of those girly sundress outfits that were popular these days. Moving gracefully away from Pearl, slipping in among the throng of pedestrians coming toward her. Even in the bright yellow dress, she’d disappeared. Half a block away, and she made the last of the walk signal. It would be impossible for Pearl to catch up with her.

The woman was familiar, but in a way Pearl couldn’t grasp. There was something unsettling about her.

Then it all clicked into place, how Pearl had caught glimpses of the woman on the subway platform, near the deli she frequented, crossing the street near the office. During the past few days, she and the woman had been in the same place at the same time too often for it to be coincidental.

The woman was a talented tracker, but not a pro. That was how Pearl had spotted her. A pro would have kept her wardrobe drab and wouldn’t have worn the standout yellow dress.

Still, there was something about this woman that suggested she wasn’t to be taken lightly. Something that triggered an emotion deep in Pearl’s consciousness. Fear? She wasn’t sure. Not of what it was or why she was feeling it.

Was the woman Daniel Danielle? It wasn’t impossible. After all, the original Daniel Danielle was sometimes Danielle Daniel, a woman by all appearances. One who’d disappeared in a Florida hurricane decades ago, had never been seen again, and was listed officially as dead. One of the worst disasters in Florida history had done the job of the state and executed Daniel Danielle, clearing the docket.

Officially. There was a word that put Pearl on her guard. The presumed dead killer, or a copycat, appeared to be operating in New York.

Another possibility occurred to Pearl. The woman tailing her might be a confederate of the killer, working for him and with him. Helping him to learn about Pearl as he prepared to make his move on her. He might have done that with his earlier victims, stalked them, perhaps deliberately letting them know he was there so they would worry, become worn down by their anxiety to the point of surrender.

He’d be there to accept that surrender.

Pearl thought about that.

Be ready, you schmuck. I’m ready, too.

When she reached the office, Quinn was there alone, seated at his desk and reading something inside a yellow file folder. He glanced up when Pearl entered, and it registered on his face immediately that he knew she was distressed.

He laid what he’d been reading aside and sat back, waiting, swiveling his chair an inch this way, then that, causing a soft eek, eek.

“That isn’t important?” she asked, pointing to the folder he’d put aside.

“Sal’s report on his and Harold’s interview of Audrey Ackenheimer, neighbor of the victim.”

“Learn anything?”

“Yes. Sal’s being driven insane by Harold.”

Pearl had to smile. “It’s been that way with them for over ten years, from when they were NYPD. But somehow they make a good team. Cops who partner for years sometimes get like old married couples.”

“You’re talking about Sal and Harold because there’s something else on your mind,” Quinn said.

He stopped swiveling and the chair stopped squeaking.

“More a feeling than something I know for sure.”

“Share it so we both won’t know it for sure,” Quinn suggested.

She told him about the woman she thought was shadowing her. When she was about halfway through the account, Helen the profiler came into the office. Tall, redheaded, and sweaty, smelling like estrogen. She was wearing a running outfit with baggy shorts, a sleeveless red Fordham T-shirt, and New Balance shoes like Pearl’s, only more expensive. She paused the way people do when they realize they’ve intruded in a private conversation.

Only there was no reason for this to be private. Pearl knew it was part of the investigation.

Quinn nodded to Pearl, reading her mind, and she started over.

When she was finished, Helen said, “You’re certain it wasn’t your imagination?”

“I’m certain. And the woman was too small to be Daniel. What I’m not certain about are my speculations as to why. It doesn’t make much sense, a woman shadowing a potential victim for the killer.”

“It makes a lot of sense,” Helen said. “ Especially if the woman being followed is already slated to be a future victim. We all know how charming and manipulative some serial killers are. We also know you’re the killer’s type. It’s not unlikely that this woman’s scouting you, learning all about you, and will turn the information over to him.”

Pearl looked mad enough to spit. “I’m no teenage girl ready to be swept off my feet because some good-looking guy’s done research and knows my sign.”

Quinn was nudging his swivel chair this way and that again, making a rhythmic, almost inaudible squeaking. These two women were making him nervous. “None of it seems to fit.”

“Interesting,” Helen said, “that your gut feeling is different from Pearl’s.”

“I didn’t say I had a gut feeling about who was following me or why,” Pearl said, “only that I was being followed.”

“By a woman,” Helen added.

Quinn said, “Our killer’s familiar enough with us to know that whoever he sent to shadow Pearl, Pearl would most likely spot her. Or him.”

Helen crossed her arms and got more comfortable where she was leaning back against a desk-because of her height, almost sitting on it. “Oh, he wouldn’t care if the tail was spotted. That might have been the idea.”

“To let Pearl know she’s being stalked?”

“To let you know.”

“Playing a game.”

“Very much a game.”

“If he kills me,” Pearl said, “the game’s over.”

“Maybe not for the killer,” Helen said. “Taking you as a victim might be his way of focusing his opponent’s concentration, making the game more interesting.”

“Still doesn’t feel right,” Quinn said.

“Maybe at a certain point he lets all his victims know they’re being stalked,” Helen said. “He might derive pleasure from that. It isn’t uncommon.”

“This is an uncommon killer,” Quinn said.

Helen nodded. She stood up straight, unwinding, surprising Quinn as she almost always did with her six-foot-plus height. “There is that.”

“There’s the other thing,” Pearl said.

They both looked at her.

“I’m an uncommon victim.”