Pulse

56

I t was cool and dim in the lounge off the Lumineux Hotel’s lobby. The lounge featured lots of black leather, tinted glass, and brushed aluminum. A few business types sat here and there, talking deals, making excuses, their drinks before them like ceremonial potions on square white coasters. Futures could be made or lost here in ways profound but barely noticeable.

The killer sat at the bar and periodically checked his watch. Linda Brooks hadn’t suspected he was following her. At first he’d thought she might enter the hotel, which could have provided some interesting aspects. Each quarry was, after all, an adventure.

Instead, she’d walked past the hotel and entered the Cartling Towers, a glass and steel monstrosity adjacent to the Lumineux. He’d managed to squeeze into the crowded elevator she’d ridden to a high floor, and exited after she did, turning the other way in the hall and then stopping and watching which door she entered. He could perform that maneuver adroitly and without attracting attention. He’d had practice.

A psychiatrist’s office. Wonderful!

He glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes before the hour, so it was likely she had an appointment.

Linda had entered the office of a Dr. Grace Moore, according to the brass lettering on the door. So probably she was under analysis, learning to cope with her problems. She hadn’t realized her primary problem was close behind her, watching the play of her nylon-clad calf muscles as she strode in her high heels, the pendulum sway of her hips, the graceful elbows-in swing of her lissome arms.

He made a study of her, as he did with all of them.

The killer considered entering the doctor’s office, perhaps taking a seat in the waiting room, if there was one. Pretending, if necessary, that he’d accidentally entered the wrong office. Linda wouldn’t recognize him. Not for sure. She’d only seen him from a distance, and then only briefly. He’d never moved in close without being positive he wasn’t spotted. And she’d never imagine he could pop up here, of all places.

He would artfully make his exit while her mind was still working and wondering, leaving her frightened and unknowing. Oh, he was tempted. It would be daring and fun and productive. And it would certainly confuse, and maybe rattle, her analyst. But he had second thoughts about that idea. It might be a mistake for her to see him in such close quarters.

This wasn’t the time to take risks. There was no reason to prod the increasingly muddled mind he was making uneasy, or to stir the will he would soon break. This hobby-oh well, obsession-of his fascinated in part because it always became a joint venture. Eventually his quarry would long for the suspense to end, and would join in the process.

Standing in the hall outside Dr. Grace Moore’s office door, he’d decided to have a drink at the bar in the hotel next door, and then go to Linda’s apartment while she was still on the couch-if her analyst actually used a couch-and rearrange some things in her refrigerator and medicine chest. Not drastically, but unmistakably, so she’d strongly suspect-but not know — that someone had been in her apartment during her absence.

He could picture her, still rattled by what she’d seen in the fridge, standing in front of the rearranged medicine cabinet where she’d gone to take one of her tranquilizers, and seeing the bottle of pills for some reason resting on the wrong shelf-and upside down. How soon she’d be off the track, almost immediately after a session with the good doctor. It would be enough to shake her faith in science.

He paid for his drink and dismounted his bar stool, then left the hotel and had the doorman hail a cab.

As he gave the driver a cross-street destination, he thought he might spend a little time in Linda’s apartment, go through some of her papers and perhaps find out why she was seeing a shrink. She’d be on the couch (if Dr. Grace Moore used a couch) at least another half hour or so, and it would take her a while to arrive even if she came straight home.

“Keep in touch with Quinn and Q and A,” Harley Renz told Nancy Weaver, “but I’ve got something else important, and confidential, I want you to do.”

Nancy Weaver, seated in one of the chairs angled toward Renz’s desk in the commissioner’s office, was keenly interested. And alert. She didn’t actually trust Renz. Not all the way. He’d sacrifice her in an NYPD minute if it suited his purpose. He was a valuable but tricky ally.

Knowing when to keep her mouth shut, Weaver waited silently for Renz to continue.

“There’s an undercover cop named Tennyson, working Vice in Midtown right now.”

Weaver came up with the vague image of a tall, lanky cop. “Jim Tennyson?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Seen him around, is all.”

“Would he recognize you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Take precautions anyway.”

Weaver waited again, seemingly unconcerned. Renz would make known what sorts of precautions were necessary.

“I want you to put a loose tail on Tennyson, find out where he goes, who he sees. You’re going to have to be careful. He crosses paths with some pretty mean assholes.”

“When you say put a loose tail…”

“I mean you by yourself, Weaver. And whatever you learn, you’ll share with me and no one else. It’ll be worth your while.”

Weaver was sure of that. She also knew it would be a bad idea to refuse the commissioner’s request. Renz would slit his grandmother’s throat if it might help him in his relentless bureaucratic climb. No, it was a political climb now. Even better, if Weaver stayed on Renz’s good side. Especially if she learned something about him that made him vulnerable.

If she had something on him that made him have to trust her, she knew it could go one of two ways: her future would be secured, or he would destroy her so she’d no longer be a potential danger to him.

It was a rough game she was playing.

“I understand the necessity for confidentiality, sir. You can trust me.”

“I know I can, Weaver, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Their gazes locked and something passed between them, an unspoken understanding between takers but not givers. The only two types of humans on this earth. Or at least in the city of New York.

Renz made a tent of his pudgy fingers and said nothing more, so Weaver stood up to leave.

“Do what you have to do,” he said behind her.

She nodded.

Story of my life.

Concrete walls bearing indecipherable graffiti, steep grades overgrown with weeds, cars moving along on trackside roadways, all flashed past the window wherein the killer could see his somber reflection.

He was on the train back into New York City from Stamford, Connecticut. It was only a forty-five-minute commute, and it had taken less than an hour to visit a hardware store in Stamford where duplicate keys were made.

He’d had to do this. There was no certitude. Linda Brooks might at any time remove her spare door key from beneath the welcome mat outside her apartment door and change her locks. If she was seeing an analyst, she might well receive that very sound advice.

He’d explained to the girl behind the hardware counter that he had to leave the original key with his wife so she could come and go in his absence, but he’d made a wax impression of their house key. Could she duplicate it?

Of course she could, but it would cost more than a simple reproduction.

He gladly paid the extra charge.

While the key was being made, he browsed around the store and bought a kit for hanging pictures. Let the girl working the key machine, who also had checked him out, draw her own conclusions about him and his fictitious wife moving or redecorating.

He was soon out of the hardware store and on his way back to the train station, a copy of Linda Brooks’s door key in a small envelope deep in his pocket.

He knew that having the key, feeling its warm, light weight and presence against his thigh, hastened the date when it would be used for the last time.

The train slowed and took on passengers at one of its stops along the way. Then it picked up speed again and rocketed along the rails toward the city and Linda Brooks and her destiny.