Serial

33

It was a few minutes past eleven the next morning. Quinn was alone in the office, a quiet cocoon in the maelstrom of Manhattan. The sharp ring of the phone was startling. He squinted at caller ID. Nift from the morgue. Quinn reached for the receiver.

“I won’t keep you in suspense,” Nift said, when Quinn had picked up. “Official cause of Candice Culligan’s death was a heart attack.”

Quinn was slightly surprised. “Pain did that to her?”

“More likely the thought of more pain. Under the kind of torture she underwent, sometimes the body and mind simply can’t endure any longer. If Candy hadn’t had the coronary event, she would have soon bled to death from the knife wounds. The partial skinning process.”

Candy. Not only was Nift on a first-name basis with the woman’s corpse, he was using a nickname. Quinn wondered sometimes about Nift’s relationships with his female subjects. Pearl had voiced suspicions about the obnoxious little ME, and Pearl had an annoying way of being right about people.

“What about the way her throat was cut open?” Quinn asked, trying to shake the creepy feeling that sometimes came over him when he was talking with Nift.

“A sharp, broad, and curved knife blade did that in two intersecting cuts, probably done slowly. The cutting wasn’t as deep or damaging as it appeared. The throat wound might have been the final one inflicted, and the killer thought it was the coup de grace. But she was already near death when her throat was cut. I say near death because her heart was still pumping when the injury was inflicted. The wound bled enough to indicate that.”

“Was the same knife used to inflict all her wounds?”

“It looks that way. A handy little blade. And by the way, there was no damage from the necklace chain with the S charm. And apparently it was put on the victim before her death.”

“I don’t suppose there was anything of the perpetrator on her.”

“Not even a hair. And the only blood on her was her own. There was no flesh beneath her fingernails. No saliva or sperm anywhere. Just the marks of long and arduous torture, mostly of peeling off her top layer of skin and leaving it hang in shreds, until finally her heart gave out. I’ve been over every inch of her, Quinn, and I can tell you this little tootsie went the hard way.”

Little tootsie. Jesus, Nift!

“There were twelve carefully placed cuts on her body, used to initiate the peeling process, and twenty-seven stab wounds in and around her pubic area. The knife penetrated her vagina at least twice. Not far, but it did great damage.”

“Raped with a knife blade,” Quinn said. “Was she dead at the time?”

“No, those injuries were all antemortem.”

“He’s one sick bastard,” Quinn said. “What about the blood around her mouth. The shoe do that?”

“No,” Nift said, “her tongue was cut out.”

“God! I hope he didn’t do that to her while she was still alive.”

“She was dead, or there would have been even more blood. And maybe we’d have gotten lucky and she might have bitten him. That would have given us some DNA to work with. He’s one careful killer, Quinn.”

“And angry.”

“The tongue might have been removed by the same knife he used to skin her. Actually, it did a neat job, like it had a hook blade and was made expressly for removing tongues.”

“People eat calves’ tongues. Do slaughterhouses use a special kind of knife to remove them?”

“I don’t know. Your department. Go question some cows. If you don’t have any more questions, I’m going to terminate our conversation, Quinn. I got another hot date waiting. Well, cool date.”

“I’ll call you if I think of anything,” Quinn said.

“I was just about to suggest that,” Nift said, and broke the connection.

The street door opened with a draft of warm air, and Fedderman came in wearing his brand-new suit and a fresh white shirt. He walked like a model in need of a runway. “There’s no Nathan Devliner in the New York phone directories,” he said.

“No surprise there,” Quinn said.

“Also, I talked with all the residents in Candice Culligan’s building. Nada for my efforts.” He strutted over and poured himself a mug of coffee, careful not to drip anything on his sleeve. “What the animal did to her couldn’t have made much noise.”

Fedderman went to his desk and slouched in his chair, ruining the suit’s effect so that he was once again the familiar Fedderman. Quinn told him about Nift’s phone call.

“Cut her tongue out?” Fedderman’s face screwed up as if his own tongue ached in sympathy.

“ ’Fraid so,” Quinn said. “Nift said the Skinner did a neat job of it. Probably with the same knife that inflicted the other wounds. Happened after she was dead. Killer probably knew there’d be too much blood if he tried it while she was still alive. Besides that, she might have managed to bite him.”

“Killer’s smart,” Fedderman said. “He leaves us nothing to work with except what he chooses. Sends us the way he wants us to go.”

“Toward Socrates’s Cavern,” Quinn said. “The members’ names written in blood, the letter S on or near the victims, maybe even a victim resembling a sacrificial animal… it all points too clearly in that direction. By now the killer must know we’re not buying into it.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Fedderman said. “He might think we’re not very smart.”

“I can’t imagine what would give him that idea,” Quinn said, “except he’s getting away with murder.”

“Maybe he believes in ghosts. All the suspects he’s given us are dead.”

Fedderman stood up from his chair in seemingly disjointed sections, the way he always did; even the Armani suit couldn’t disguise that. He walked over to the rack and removed his suit coat, then draped it carefully on a hanger.

“Why the new threads?” Quinn asked, as Fedderman returned to his desk chair. He picked up some papers and idly scanned them, then dropped them back, as if he might not have heard Quinn.

“I thought it was time,” he said at last.

“I didn’t notice any patches on your old clothes,” Quinn said.

Fedderman sighed and met Quinn’s gaze directly. “You aren’t gonna let this go, are you? You or Pearl?”

Quinn smiled. “Sorry, Feds.”

“Okay. I’m interested in somebody, and she seems interested in me. I figured, in her honor, I oughta replace at least one of my old detective suits.”

“I would think you’d save the Master of the Universe outfit for when you weren’t working.”

“When am I not working?”

“You’ve got a point. In fact, you need another suit.”

Fedderman shrugged. “I got a couple of sport jackets that’ll get me by.”

“Do any of us know this woman who wields such sartorial influence?”

“I don’t think so.” Fedderman squirmed in his chair. “You know her name, though. Penny.”

“I don’t think-” Then Quinn remembered. “Penny Noon?”

“We’ve gone out a couple of times.” Fedderman made a backhanded, dismissive motion with his long fingers, as if the assignations meant nothing of importance.

Quinn knew better. “I dunno, Feds. A victim’s sister…”

“Are there rules and regulations?” Fedderman asked.

“No, no…” Quinn leaned back in his chair, almost toppling, and laced his fingers over his stomach. Fedderman was right. Penny Noon wasn’t all that close to what had happened to her sister Nora. Or didn’t seem to be. It wasn’t as if she was a suspect or an eyewitness. And this wasn’t the NYPD. He lifted his feet and let the chair tilt forward. “No problem, Feds. Live happily ever after.”

“Well, thank you very much, Your Honor.”

“Thanks for what?” Pearl asked.

Neither man had noticed her enter. She wandered over and got her morning mug of coffee. Third mug, actually. Her lush black hair was still mussed, almost the way it was when Quinn had left the brownstone this morning and she was tumbling out of bed.

As she moved toward her desk, she glanced in the direction of the coatrack, then at Fedderman. “You got an ascot goes with that thing?”

“I don’t need a mascot,” Fedderman said.

She plopped down in her desk chair, ostensibly uninterested in what he had to say. She got out the Swiss Army knife she kept in her drawer and used as a letter opener, and deftly sliced open an envelope she’d plucked from her post office box on the way to the job. Maybe she was going to forget about the portion of the discussion she’d overheard on entering the office.

“Thanks for what?” she asked again, absently.

Quinn said nothing. He and Fedderman knew Pearl was on the scent and would one way or another get an answer to her question.

“Penny Noon,” Fedderman said, in quick surrender.

“Penny Noon what?” Pearl asked, glancing at what looked like an ad that she’d slid from the envelope.

“Nora Noon’s sister,” Quinn said. “Feds is seeing her.”

“She’s been invisible?”

“No. Seeing her.”

“In a romantic way?”

“Yes.”

“Explains the amazing dream suit,” Pearl said. She crumpled envelope and ad and dropped them into her wastebasket. She looked deadpan at Fedderman. “Penny short for Penelope?”

“I don’t know,” Fedderman said.

“Must be serious.”

Quinn thought it was time to change the subject before Fedderman could come up with a retort. “Nift called about the postmortem,” he said to Pearl. He told her about the phone call and about Candice Culligan’s tongue being removed. Even tough Pearl blanched when she heard about the tongue. But she seemed to regain her equilibrium quickly.

“That’s sick, Quinn.”

“Don’t I know it? All in all, there’s not much we can use. The victim was methodically tortured and then stabbed twenty-seven times in and around the pubic area.”

“The things we do for love,” Pearl said.