Pulse

37

J ody, unaware of a similar cat that had run away, renamed this dark gray tabby cat Snitch, after a cat she’d had when she was ten years old. She would feed it and it would sleep in her room. Everyone agreed to that but the cat. The food plan was okay with Snitch, but she slept where she damn well pleased. Sometimes that was at the foot of Quinn and Pearl’s bed.

Living in the brownstone was light-years better than living in the cramped apartment Jody’d had. And she was allowed to keep the rent money allocated to her. The only downside was that she had to travel farther to get to work, across town to the East Side.

Jody stood now in the Enders and Coil conference room with the firm’s avuncular and wise senior partner, Joseph Coil. Well-padded black leather chairs rimmed the long mahogany table. There was on the table a large crystal vase of incredibly realistic silk roses as a centerpiece that was removed when the room was being used for serious business. That Coil hadn’t sat down, or invited Jody to sit, indicated this was to be a short, informal conversation.

The light was at Coil’s back. Behind him stretched a panoramic view of the East River. He politely shifted position so the light wasn’t in Jody’s eyes, as if to assure her he wasn’t going to subject her to that obvious strategy of domination. He wasn’t playing games.

Coil smiled at her in a way so genuine she had to smile back. His blue eyes shone with bonhomie, and his lips curved upward in a way that suggested he smiled even in his sleep. His hair was expensively trimmed and gray, his cheeks so rosy they appeared almost rouged.

Jody assumed this was going to be a conversation about her unwarranted interest in the Dash-Meeding eminent domain case.

But it wasn’t. Yet.

“I realized,” Coil said, “that the two of us had never had a serious friendly conversation. I wanted to talk to you about the law in general. To get your views on it.”

Jody was surprised. Why would a man like this be interested in the views of a lowly intern? “I agree with the position that our legal system is fallible, but it’s the best there is.” Yada, yada. But she did believe it.

“And possibly the most pliable and useful,” Coil said. The smile never left his face.

“I suppose,” Jody said. “Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it in those terms.”

“Well, it takes time to understand the utilitarian side of the law.” He bowed his head and shook it slowly side to side, as if amused. “You have grasped by now that it is quite malleable?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The law is in fact so malleable that at a certain high level it is more about how to manipulate the system within the penumbra of the law, than about the law itself.”

Jody struggled for a moment with that one. “I can see how it might be used that way,” she said.

“The longer you practice the law, and the more importance your duties take on, the more you come to understand the law’s true and most important purpose. It’s like higher math: the loftier and more complex it is, the further it moves into the realm of what might be thought of as a more sublime logic.”

“It becomes more and more malleable,” Jody said.

Coil fairly beamed. “Smart woman. At a certain plateau, that malleability is what it’s all about. It’s vitally important that you comprehend that. Justice, truth, guilt, innocence, those all lose their meaning under the sword of the law; and the clay of malleability is worked in ways never imagined at the beginning of a legal process. Malleability is the king of the court.”

“I think I-”

“No, no. Give it some thought before you decide you really do understand.”

Jody smiled. “All right, I will.”

“I won’t insult you by reminding you it doesn’t matter whether our clients are guilty or innocent.”

“Everyone deserves the best counsel they can afford,” Jody said. “For that matter, the most malleable.”

“Ah!” Joseph Coil said, obviously pleased that he might have an apt pupil here. Well, that was what Jody was supposed to be, coming out of Waycliffe. And with Elaine Pratt and Chancellor Schueller’s recommendations.

He didn’t say anything else for a few seconds, and Jody thought their conversation might have ended.

But it hadn’t.

“It’s come to our notice that you’ve shown an interest in Dash-Meeding,” Coil said.

Uh-oh.

“I do find it interesting,” Jody said. “I’ve always been drawn to eminent domain law.”

“Oh? Something in your background?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“It seems like the rich stealing from the poor?”

“I’m not that naive,” Jody said with a grin.

“Yes, no reason to single out eminent domain. But the Mildred Dash case seems to command your attention.”

“I suppose that’s because it’s sort of a classic situation: a large developer and a holdout old lady standing her ground. All she’s asking is to continue living in her apartment, where her life unfolded. The place holds special significance for her.”

“It holds a special significance for Meeding Properties, too.”

“I understand that,” Jody said. “I guess it’s the familiar story, and the familiar emotion-sympathy for the old lady guarding the gate against progress.”

“I suppose you could call it progress. Meeding is going to build a lot of retail space and condominiums and overcharge its tenants. Meeding will make a lot of money.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Jody said.

Coil raised his shoulders and crossed his arms as if hugging himself. “Not for Meeding. Not for us.”

“Especially not for us,” Jody said. “It’s just that there’s the valiant old lady fighting insurmountable odds.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem, Jody.”

“But this seems to be exactly what it seems. “Meeding Properties is gigantic; Mildred Dash has lived in her apartment for twenty years, and there she stays while demolition goes on all around her building. She seems to have enough legal claim to hold the developer at bay.” Jody couldn’t help herself. “She must have a lawyer who knows about malleability.”

Coil’s mild blue gaze fixed on her and his smile held. Such a charming man. “Mildred Dash isn’t an old lady unless you count forty-eight as old. She’s a cutthroat corporate attorney with inoperable pancreatic cancer. And she doesn’t want to live in her apartment, she wants to die in it.”

Inoperable cancer. Jody could think of nothing to say other than, “Oh.”

“These things are unknowable. If she does get her wish and dies at home, it might cost Meeding Properties millions of dollars. Millions,” he repeated. “The clock is already ticking on that money.”

“Oh,” Jody said again.

Joseph Coil nodded a smiling good morning and moved toward the door. He paused going out. “Keep thinking malleability, Jody.”

“Yes, sir.”

I’m malleable, she added, to herself, not without a certain degree of disgust.

Sal Vitali called in just before noon. The call was on his cell phone, but Quinn was sitting at his desk in the Q amp;A office. Pearl and Fedderman were across the room at their desks. Fedderman was working the phone. Pearl was on her computer. Knowing she owed her mother a phone call, Pearl had waited until she knew it was time for This Is Your Life reruns at Golden Sunset and her mother wouldn’t be able to answer her phone.

Pearl left a cryptic message and hung up, feeling better. Feeling free. Obligation fulfilled. Her mother and Jody could explore their relationship without her.

But Pearl’s mother wasn’t watching This Is Your Life. That was because her granddaughter had taken a long lunch and then a long cab ride, and here she was in the spacious carpeted lobby of Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. Handshakes, smiles, and stiff hugs had been exchanged.

Jody found her maternal grandmother to be a heavyset, formidable-looking woman with a rigid hairdo and searching dark eyes. She had on a perfume that didn’t mingle well with the food scents wafting in from the nearby dining room.

The two women were seated facing each other, Jody in an uncomfortable wooden chair with upholstered arms, her grandmother in the corner of a soft leather sofa.

Jody noticed all the liver spots on her grandmother’s arms and then glanced around. “This looks like a nice place.”

“Let me tell you, sweetheart,” said her grandmother, “if I may call you that, you being the one precious issue of my barren offspring, that perhaps it looks nice but so, when you first arrive, might hell.”

“You mean the people-”

“Are disguised as people, if you mean the staff, and some of the inmates, if I may call them that. People? I would say right out of Dante’s imagination.”

“Really? Everyone I’ve talked to seems nice. And Pearl-Mom-said you have your own apartment.”

“Own cell, I would say with knowledgeable accuracy. Like they have on Devil’s Island.”

“That’s terrible,” Jody said, “that you should feel that way.”

“You’re such a smart girl. If only your mother would listen and learn.”

“Mom can be stubborn.” Jody stared at her grandmother, looking for herself in her, perhaps seeing it, trying to figure out what she thought, how she felt.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“Yes.” Jody forced a smile. “Maybe we should go into the dining room and have some lunch.”

“That isn’t food they serve in there. Come to my apartment and I have at least, learning of my granddaughter’s arrival, prepared some good and healthy soup. Not without crackers. Even croutons.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

Jody’s grandmother produced an aluminum cane that had been propped out of sight against the back of the sofa. She planted the cane’s rubber tip in the carpet and began struggling to her feet. Jody rushed to help her.

After a little dance they were both standing. Jody’s grandmother was breathing hard, even softly wheezing. “That’s fine, dear. Thank you. There are some people I want you to meet, so I can show you off, then we can have our soup and talk about your mother. Did I say croutons?”

“I think you did,” Jody answered, and found she had to move fast to keep up with her grandmother, who walked surprisingly fast for a woman with a cane.

The office’s air-conditioning unit was humming and rattling away, making phone conversations private. Fedderman wouldn’t be disturbed by Quinn speaking in a normal conversational voice.

“Whaddya got, Sal?”

“Victim’s full name is Deena Maureen Vess,” said Sal’s gravelly voice. “Neighbors say she worked at Roller Steak. That’s a restaurant where the servers zip around on skates while they juggle the food. Deena had a collision and broke her ankle. They liked her at Roller Steak and were holding her job for her.”

“She have any special friends at the restaurant?”

“Naw. She’d only been there a few weeks.”

“Love can be capricious,” Quinn said.

“From what we heard, there was no capriciousness there with Deena. At least we know now what the roller-skate key on the body meant. The killer’s sick joke.”

“Nift mentioned at the crime scene that he probably used the ankle to torture her. That’d be broken bone end against broken bone end. He might have thought that was funny, too.”

“Holy crap! We do need to catch this guy. What do you want for me and Harold to do now?”

“Have some lunch, then chat again with Deena’s neighbors. Widen your canvass. See if there’s anywhere in the area where the killer might have bought a roller-skate key. You don’t see many, if any, people using the kind of skates that require a key these days. There can’t be that many places where they’re sold.”

“Nift call with any more info from the lab?”

“I’m still waiting,” Quinn said.

He didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes after his conversation with Sal, the desk phone rang. Caller ID said it was the morgue. Nift.

“Like we thought,” Nift said, “the murder weapon was almost surely the same knife used on the last victim. She was tortured with small, painful stab wounds, and apparently by rubbing the ends of her broken ankle bones together. Looks like the ankle was broken several days ago, then reinjured. As if he struck her with something there, maybe kicked her.”

“What about the rope and duct tape?”

“Both common brands, not traceable. The tape is probably off the same roll as last time. It appears to have been firmly sealed over her mouth all through her ordeal.”

Her silent ordeal.

Quinn thought that must have been the most terrible kind of loneliness.

“Her breasts never did turn up at the crime scene,” Nift said. “They were sliced off antemortem, as with the earlier victims. He likes his victims alive when he separates their breasts from their bodies.”

“Was it done fast or slow?”

“I can’t tell for sure, Quinn, but I can guess. So can you.”

“He’d want to take his time.”

“That’s what I’d do.”

Quinn could hardly believe what he’d just heard. But that was often the way with Nift. “Why does he want them?” Quinn asked, trying to assume the same sick mind-set as the killer’s. “What does he do with them?”

“I don’t know, but they were obviously a great set. You can easily judge by the cut patterns, and what little is left.”

“ You can tell,” Quinn said, feeling a little queasy.

“Well, I’m a professional.” Nift was silent for a moment. There was a sound as if he might be shuffling through some papers. “No indications that the victim struggled. No flesh caught beneath her nails. And there were no lacerations other than those made deliberately by the killer. Looks like she didn’t so much as scratch him.”

“That’s too bad,” Quinn said.

“No indication of recent sexual intercourse.”

“Except maybe with himself.”

“No indication of that, either. This killer is a perfectionist.” Nift said. “He leaves nothing behind he doesn’t want to leave.”

“Everybody eventually overlooks something,” Quinn said. “We just have to find it.”

“So they say on the TV cop shows.”

“And they always end well,” Quinn said.

“Sooner or later they get canceled. Tell Pearl I said hello.”

“I think not,” Quinn said, but Nift had hung up.

Over dinner in the brownstone that evening, Jody didn’t mention her conversation with her grandmother. She didn’t understand why it should be kept secret, but her grandmother had extracted a sworn oath that their conversations would remain private and special. Jody, who had never had a best friend, agreed.

She did tell Quinn and Pearl about her conversation with Joseph Coil.

They both listened attentively. Pearl speared a bite of salad and considered while she chewed and swallowed.

“What Coil told you about the total malleability of the law,” she said, after washing the salad down with a sip of wine, “is bullshit.”

“Unfortunately,” Quinn said, looking across the table at Jody, “I think Coil is right.”

Jody leaned back in her chair and sipped her wine, regarding them. The gray head of Snitch the cat became visible above tabletop level. Snitch squinted at Quinn and seemed prepared to stare him down. Quinn realized Snitch might have been in Jody’s lap all through dinner.

“You guys are a lot of help,” Jody said.

“We try,” both Quinn and Pearl said almost simultaneously.

Jody grinned. “And I appreciate it.” She sat forward again. Snitch’s head disappeared. “Do you have any more information about the vic?”

“That depends,” Quinn said, “on whether you want dessert.”