Pulse

57

U sually Linda Brooks wandered, walking the streets as if she might stumble across some answer there.

The killer sometimes thought her meanderings matched the random madness of her mind. It made her more interesting to follow. His projections of where she was headed were usually wrong, not from any fault of his own, but because her mind was a fickle navigator.

But today was different. Linda was walking faster and in straight lines, her chin thrust forward. Today she conveyed an obvious sense of purpose that was almost caricature.

The killer easily followed her without being seen. She didn’t glance behind her once, as she usually did. Her focus was forward.

She crossed Amsterdam and strode north on Columbus, headed for the Upper West Side. The killer almost had to struggle to keep up.

When they reached West Seventy-ninth Street he realized where she was going. He hung back and watched her pause, and then enter the redbrick and stone building that housed Quinn and Associates Investigations.

Quinn heard the street door, then the office door, and watched from behind his desk as the woman entered. She had long dark hair, and was medium height and slender. Standing framed in the doorway as she was, in her tight jeans and yellow T-shirt, he couldn’t help but notice she was buxom. The T-shirt was lettered MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS across the chest.

Once Quinn got beyond her general description and focused on details, he was struck by the haunted quality of her dark eyes. The pale flesh of her face was taut over good bones. She was youthful yet haggard, as if she’d just gotten over a serious illness. Quinn could almost smell fear emanating from her.

“This is the investigative agency?” she said.

He smiled. “You’re in the right place.”

“Whew! Haven’t been there for a while.” She gave him a narrow look. “You should be Captain Frank Quinn.”

“I am. Not a captain any longer, though.”

“Wow. Right place, right person.” She advanced closer to his desk and he motioned toward a chair. Something told him he shouldn’t stand up and loom over her. She might take flight like an exotic bird.

She rolled the chair closer to the desk and sat down, assuming a prim posture. Nearer to him now, the fear in her was even more evident. As was a sadness.

“First of all,” she said, “let’s get it on the table that I’m crazy, but not all the time.”

“Noted,” Quinn said.

She waved her slender arms. “Schizophrenic is the diagnosis. Voices, hallucinations, the whole bag of agony.”

“We can work around that,” Quinn said.

She grinned. “You sound like my analyst.”

He was glad to hear she was in treatment.

“My name is Linda Brooks,” she said, “and I’m being followed.” She leaned slightly forward as if to give the words more impact. “Not just today, right now, but for about a week. It’s like I have a shadow, only it’s not a shadow. A shadow doesn’t keep its distance. Or disappear suddenly even though no light has been switched on. No shadow I’ve seen, anyway.”

“Okay, Linda. Have you gotten a good look at him?”

“How did you know it was a him?”

“I surmised. I do that a lot.”

“Yeah, you would. He’s about five ten or so, thin and fit looking. He wears a blue and gray sweat suit some of the time. Other times jeans and joggers. Some of the time a suit and tie. If I saw him in a photograph, I’d probably recognize him.”

Quinn raised a forefinger, motioning for her to wait a moment, then rummaged through one of his desk drawers. He drew out a copy of an old photo of Daniel Danielle from a Miami Herald news item and laid it on the desk.

Linda edged closer and peered at it. “That’s him.”

Quinn got another photo, this one a shot of Jerry Lido taken for Q amp;A files.

“I told you, that’s him,” Linda said, glancing at the photo.

“Okay,” Quinn said. The two men weren’t completely dissimilar. They were about the same size and each had dark hair. Daniel was wearing what looked like a prison shirt, the booze-emaciated Lido a blue shirt with a loosened tie.

“They’re not the same man,” Quinn pointed out.

“I know that. But they could be at different times.”

It took Quinn a few seconds to understand what she meant. “You mean following you at different times?”

“Of course. I’m not stupid. I don’t think they change identities, just that the same man can look different in different photographs. I mean, I’m not crazy all the time.”

“You said that.” He suspected it was her mantra.

“Now you sound like my analyst.”

Time to get off this track. “I won’t be analyzing you, just helping if I can. By the way, who is your analyst?”

Without hesitating, she gave him the name and address of a psychoanalyst he’d never heard of but who had a respectable address.

“I have good medical insurance,” she said, while Quinn was still jotting down the information. “My mother saw to that before she died. My father died the year before she did.”

“Natural deaths, I assume.”

“Sure. None of that forty-whacks stuff.”

“Other relatives?”

“None who’ll have anything to do with me. I stole from all of them.”

“How long have you been seeing Dr. Moore?” Quinn asked.

“Years and years. I’m not crazy twenty-four-seven. When I take my meds I’m perfectly normal for a while.”

“Is this the first time you’ve been followed?”

“By someone who wasn’t from the OSS, yes. You know who they are?”

“A long time ago, they became the CIA,” Quinn said.

“That’s if you accept the lie that they were ever completely disbanded.”

“I’ve often wondered,” Quinn said.

“I know you’re not the cops. You’ll want money. I can’t pay you.”

“We’ll do it pro bono.” Because the city is paying me, and because you resemble Pearl.

“It would be best if you could catch him in my bed.”

“He sleeps in your bed?”

“Naps, maybe. I can see that somebody’s been lying in it. When I’m not there, of course. He stays in my apartment sometimes when I’m not home.”

“How does he get in?”

“Windows sometimes, if they’re unlocked. And he probably has a key that opens all doors.”

“Have you and he ever been there at the same time?”

“Once, when I saw him leaving through a window. But time and place always intersect someplace, don’t they?”

“They do,” Quinn said.

“So here’s my place.” She dug in her purse for a paper and pencil and wrote down a West Side address a few blocks off Broadway, uptown from where they sat. Beneath the address was a phone number. “I know how you work,” she said, pushing the paper toward him over the desktop. “I’ve read the literature. I won’t know you’re around, but you’ll be there. If he comes around again, whoever’s watching over me will tackle him. Bend his arm behind his back and he’ll talk. You can make him tell you who he is. We both know who he is. The wind told me who he is.”

“Is that where you hear voices, in the wind?”

“Not always. But pretty often, actually. If the wind is blowing on stone.”

Quinn thought that would be almost all the time, in New York. “What have the voices been telling you?”

“To be careful. For God’s sake, be careful.” She stared at Quinn with those eyes that had seen way too much that wasn’t there, but in her view had to be somewhere. Whatever happened in her world became twisted and sharp before she could get a proper grasp of it. Her mortal enemy roamed the interior of her skull. Probably the pressure never ceased.

Quinn understood that he couldn’t imagine her pain.