Pulse

66

A fter an uneasy night of patchwork dreams, Quinn was eating a late breakfast with Pearl in the brownstone’s kitchen. Waffles and sausage patties, all pre-prepared, and the finished issue of toaster and microwave. Pearl’s idea of cooking. It didn’t smell bad, though. The faint haze suspended in the warm kitchen was pungent and conducive to the appetite. But it didn’t fool Quinn or Jody. They’d been tricked before.

Jody had already left, explaining that she wasn’t hungry and would stop on the way to her job at Enders and Coil for a bagel. Smart young woman, Quinn thought, not unlike her mother.

He wondered if, when he left the brownstone, he’d smell like waffles and sausage. And if so, for how long?

Quinn’s cell phone played a cavalry charge trumpet tune and he dug it out of his pocket to see who was calling. Nift at the morgue. Quinn swallowed what he suspected would be his last bite of sausage and pressed the talk button.

“Mornin’, Nift. Whaddya got?”

The annoying little M.E. didn’t bother saying hello. “You talking with your mouth full, Quinn?”

“None of your business.”

“I was you, I know what it would be full of,” Nift said. Quinn could somehow hear the nasty grin on the little bastard’s face.

“This a business call?” Quinn asked, with a hint of warning.

A hint was enough to scare Nift into a strictly business mode. “Linda Brooks died from a heart attack, no doubt caused by shock. Like the other victims when the killer played his games with them. By the time he got around to administering the coup de grace, she was already dead.”

“I hope that was a disappointment to him.”

“No doubt it was. But he worked clean as usual. No usable prints, no DNA traces. Not even indefinite ones like with Macy Collins.”

Quinn had never had much hope for the meager Collins sample that might have been mostly her own blood.

“There was a slight residue of condom lubricant in the vagina,” Nift said. “The murder weapon was probably the same knife. Also used to remove Linda’s substantial knockers. No sign of those, by the way.”

“What about Grace Moore?”

“Probably not enough of a rack to interest our killer. He’s definitely a breast man with high standards.”

“At least she wasn’t mutilated,” Quinn said. He looked across the table and saw Pearl watching him intensely, interested in his end of the conversation.

“My guess is her death was comparatively easy,” Nift said. “A quick choke to silence her, then a single, accurate stab wound to the heart. I think she was simply in the way. Unlucky in the extreme.”

“Torture wounds have any commonality with the other victims?”

“You saw them. They almost had to have been the result of the same knife, the same killer. And they resemble morgue photos of Daniel Danielle’s work so many years ago. He loves to carve.”

“Yet he left Grace Moore untouched in that regard.”

“She wasn’t in his plans,” Nift said. “I can understand that.”

My God, so can I, Quinn thought. What’s it doing to me, getting into the heads of these sickos? Hunter thinking like prey, a part of him living inside their skulls. The killer is doing that with his potential victims. It’s part of his game. But I’m not playing a game. Am I?

“Speaking of commonalities,” Nift said, “the panties on Linda Brooks were the same size and brand as the previous victim’s. We even found a pubic hair for analysis that confirms the fact they were hers. Also, elastic marks, the lay of the material, looks like he temporarily untied the victim’s legs and did the panty exchange postmortem, but before rigor mortis set in.”

Quinn couldn’t help imagining the killer maneuvering dead limbs into various positions to work off and on the panties. A complicated task, but it might be a chore he for some reason immensely enjoyed. One he was compelled to do as an exercise in total control. Quinn’s stomach did a loop.

Pearl was giving him her narrowed eye look. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“What?” Nift asked on the phone.

“Anything else we might deem important?” Quinn asked.

“No. Let me know if you happen to find the boobs. And say hello to Pearl.”

Quinn flipped the phone shut without replying.

“Nift?” Pearl asked.

“Yeah.”

“Want some more sausage?”

“ No.”

Jody stopped for a bagel at a Starbucks near Enders and Coil. She’d often had lunch with Sarah Benham, but this was their first breakfast. The two women had become even closer friends, though Sarah was still something of an enigma to Jody.

They were at a table near the back. Sarah had a cinnamon scone, Jody a toasted everything bagel with cream cheese and strawberry jam. Both had tall lattes. Jody couldn’t help thinking how much better this was than her mother’s toasted frozen waffles and microwaved sausages.

“So how’s your mom doing on the Daniel Danielle investigation?” Sarah asked, and took a cautious sip of her steaming latte.

The question caught Jody off guard. “I’m surprised you’re interested?”

“Why?”

“You never seemed interested before.”

“The killer’s apparently branching out,” Sarah said. “He killed two women this time, according to the news. I was just wondering what that might mean.”

“We didn’t have time to talk about it this morning.”

“I thought you were intrigued by your mom’s work.”

“I am.” Jody took a bite of bagel and chewed.

Sarah smiled. “But you’d still rather be an attorney than a cop.”

“As of now, yes.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very strong commitment.”

“It’s not.”

Both women sipped their lattes, thinking about the answer that had popped out.

Jody, not committed?

“Something about Enders and Coil?” Sarah asked.

“About one of their cases. A woman refusing to move out of her apartment so the client, a big development company, can tear down her building.”

“Sounds like the plot of a movie.”

“Or a novel.”

“Why do they want to tear down the apartment building?”

“They want the entire block for some big project. Office buildings, condos… they have no moral-or possibly legal-right to just plow this poor woman under.”

“What about eminent domain?”

“It’s not that simple,” Jody said. “Believe me.”

“Lots of times, when you’ve finally finished thinking things through, they are simple. That’s when you make up your mind.”

Jody laughed. “I’m not there yet.”

Sarah looked at her more seriously. “How important to you is this woman’s plight?”

“Very.”

“But why? Do you know her?”

“I feel that I do.”

Sarah frowned. “Does anyone at Enders and Coil know how you feel?”

“To a degree.”

“I think you should give this a lot of thought before siding with a woman who’s going to have to move out one way or the other. You might be risking your career, your future.”

“How do you know she’ll have to move?”

Sarah shook her head, her expression sad. “They always do, in these kinds of cases. It’s in almost everyone’s best interest.”

“Everyone’s but hers.”

“There’s no denying that. But maybe they’ll offer her a large settlement to agree to move.”

“They’ve done that and she’s refused.

“Did she say why?”

“No. But it isn’t about money.”

“What money can’t do, maybe more money can. Or some other kind of persuasion.”

“What makes you think so?”

Sarah leaned closer across the fake marble table. Steam from the lattes rose as if the two women were engaged in some sort of alchemy. “I know someone who has a connection at the developer, Jody. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you disassociate yourself from this case, and this woman’s hopeless cause.”

Jody was surprised, but she realized she shouldn’t be. She actually didn’t know much about Sarah Benham. “You know something Enders and Coil doesn’t?”

“Probably.” Sarah studied Jody and then shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you, Jody. It would be betraying the confidence of a friend. I wouldn’t betray our confidences that way.”

Jody sampled her latte and still found it too hot to sip. “See?” she said.

“See what?”

“It really isn’t that simple.”

Fifteen minutes later Sarah left the coffee shop first.

Through the window displaying pastry, Jody watched her join a sunlit crowd of people massed on the sidewalk, waiting for the traffic light to flash a walk signal so they could cross the intersection. The signal appeared like a silent command. After an aggressive cab bullied its way through a right turn, Sarah disappeared in the flow of pedestrians.

Jody still had time to spare, so she opened her laptop. But she didn’t tap into the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi. Instead she inserted a thumb drive containing copies of Enders and Coil files and began rummaging through them. If someone from the firm, which was only a few blocks away, happened to enter the coffee shop and saw what she was doing, it would probably mean immediate dismissal. And less immediately, but just as likely, prosecution.

Well, life wasn’t without risk.

Jody thought about Mildred Dash trapped and terrorized in her apartment, waging the good fight against an evil manifestation of capitalism, and pressed on.

She enjoyed the challenge and couldn’t help becoming engrossed in what she was doing. She came across no actual evidence of criminality, but she was surprised to find e-mail exchanges with Waycliffe College. All the e-mails were encrypted, and she was unable to break the code. But she did notice that some of the messages bore Elaine Pratt’s email address. That surprised her, and kept her at her task longer than she’d intended.

Futilely trying to decode the e-mails made her almost twenty minutes late when she arrived at Enders and Coil.

That didn’t seem to matter, though, in light of more important events. Word had arrived that Mildred Dash had been terrorized by an intruder last night and had been found by a watchman early this morning in a coma. She was hospitalized and in intensive care.

Associate attorneys were dashing about or yammering on the phone. Jack Enders and Joseph Coil both appeared somber and determined, and totally in control. Jody had never before seen or been part of an event of such urgency at the firm.

She was assigned to continue calling the hospital and family to learn the seriousness of Mildred’s condition. Meanwhile, litigators at Enders and Coil would be busy discussing the legal ramifications of razing her apartment building while her unit was unoccupied.

Here was opportunity, if they seized it.

Hours counted. Maybe minutes.

No one actually came right out and said it would be best if Mildred Dash died, but it was on the tips of a lot of tongues.

Jody was disgusted, but like everyone else at the firm, hanging in suspense. The mood was contagious and oddly, undeniably, pleasurable. She could see it on the faces of her coworkers. They loved being part of the drama.

Suddenly Jody wondered, was this what Sarah Benham had known about when she’d cautioned her at breakfast?