Serial

34

No one spoke for a while. Pearl booted up her desk computer and fed something into it with a flash drive she’d brought with her and dug out of her purse. She seemed, in her mind, to be alone in the room.

Quinn wondered why she had to hound Fedderman so persistently. She did that to almost everyone she knew. Quinn could love her because he understood that these were defensive actions. Preemptory strikes, but defensive.

There were other, more admirable, facets to Pearl’s personality, and she was so damned smart. That last part was what made her at least bearable to her fellow detectives. There was no denying her talent. Or her doggedness.

Still, she could make life miserable for Fedderman. And for Vitali and Mishkin when they were unable to avoid her.

And, let’s face it, sometimes for Quinn.

“I did a few hours’ work on my laptop before coming in,” she said. “Made a discovery.”

“About our latest victim?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah. Six years ago Candice Culligan was beaten and raped. They caught the guy and he got fifteen to twenty at Elmira. Five months ago he was released because DNA evidence established that even though she’d identified him, he couldn’t have been the rapist.”

Pearl took a slow sip of coffee. Quinn knew she had more to say and was stringing it out. Fedderman was glaring at her, maybe still angry about the remark about not knowing Penny Noon’s full name.

“So she was a rape victim,” Fedderman said.

“They all were.”

Quinn leaned forward. “Say again, Pearl.”

“ All of the victims where there were Socrates’s Cavern clues were at one time or another rape victims. And the accused and convicted rapist in each case was released when DNA evidence overturned his conviction.”

“So that’s the relevant common denominator,” Quinn said. “Not Socrates’s Cavern.”

“It would seem so,” Pearl said. “We’ve been had.”

“The bastard was playing us,” Fedderman said. “Using Socrates’s Cavern’s old membership list to lead us down the wrong road.”

“We suspected it,” Pearl said. “At least, I did.”

Quinn laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back, back, back in his swivel chair. Pearl and Fedderman were used to Quinn tempting disaster. He’d never actually tipped the chair, only almost.

“Bears thinking about, doesn’t it?” Pearl said.

“Sure does,” Quinn said. “It’s too much of a coincidence that all these falsely accused and released rapists would all at once set about killing the women responsible for putting them behind bars.”

“And ruining those men’s lives,” Fedderman said, “breaking up their families, blackening their reputations, costing them their employment…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pearl said. “You’re thinking these guys have actually all gone bonkers at once and are getting their evens with the women who messed up their lives?”

“It’s barely possible,” Fedderman said, but not as if he believed it.

Pearl got a comb from her purse and ran it through her hair. “We’re talking about a serial killer here, Feds. And a torturer. Not many people-even pissed-off falsely accused men-have that kind of monster living inside their skins.”

“But one of them does,” Quinn said. “One who knows he’ll be the prime suspect when his accuser is murdered. The initial victims and the Socrates’s Cavern connection are subterfuge. A forest so we won’t notice the tree. He’s killing the others so his intended victim will be just another corpse, part of a string of serial-killer victims.”

“And if he’s arranged for a halfway plausible alibi,” Pearl said, “we’ll never get onto him.”

“Oh, we will,” Quinn said. “Sooner or later we’ll nail the bastard.”

“I like the imagery,” Pearl said.

“I wonder how many other women are out there in the same positions,” Fedderman said, “with the men they falsely identified as their rapists recently sprung from prison.”

“According to Blood and Justice-” Pearl began.

“What’s that?” Quinn asked.

“The organization of attorneys dedicated to using DNA evidence to right legal wrongs. I used their website statistics to work it out. The number of mistakenly identified and convicted rapists released in the last five years in the New York area is thirty-two.”

“You’re joking?” Fedderman said.

Pearl finished with the comb and put it back in her purse. Her hair was still disheveled. “DNA doesn’t joke.”

“Assuming all those women are still in the area,” Quinn said, “they’re all in danger. We need to talk to them.”

“And the men who did time because of them,” Fedderman said. “One of them is probably the Skinner.”

“I’ll print out the list of women,” Pearl said. “Then I’ll work up the list of their exonerated alleged rapists.”

“Names, addresses, whatever else you can find out,” Quinn said.

Pearl was smiling. “I was just thinking, the safest of those women is the one the murderer doesn’t want to harm until he’s ready to risk drawing attention to himself-the woman who mistakenly identified the Skinner.”

“If she isn’t dead,” Fedderman said. “One of the early victims.”

Quinn shook his head no. “To be on the safe side, our guy will wait and take her down somewhere in the middle of his trophy hunt. He’ll want the camouflage.”

“Crazy old world,” Fedderman said.

“It is if you’re mooning about Penelope,” Pearl said.

Fedderman was about to say something when Quinn caught his eye. Fedderman let out a long breath and sat back. Some things, said the look on his face, you simply have to endure.

Like Pearl and inclement weather.

“First thing we need to do,” Quinn said, “is talk to the three men who were falsely accused of raping the first three victims.”

“Keeping in mind,” Pearl said, “that part of what we believe could be bullshit, and we might be talking to the killer.”

Pithy Pearl.

“There is one other job I figured I’d give to Feds,” Quinn said. “We need somebody to go to a slaughterhouse and find out if they use a special knife to remove calves’ tongues. If so, see if they’ll give you one.” Quinn grinned. “A knife, that is.”

Fedderman got up and deftly slipped on and buttoned his suit coat, as if he were about to model it. “Somebody’s gotta look into this tongue thing, so why not me?”

“It’ll keep your mind off Penelope,” Quinn said.

Pearl said, “God, I hope so.”

When Fedderman had left, Quinn phoned Renz at One Police Plaza.

“A breakthrough on the Skinner case?” Renz asked.

“Any second now,” Quinn said. “Did you talk to Nift or read his report?”

“Yeah. The thing with the tongue-that’s new. Give you any ideas?”

“Symbolism, maybe,” Quinn said. “The victims talked at a trial and sent people to prison for rapes they didn’t commit.”

“ All of the victims?”

“So far, yeah. And there are twenty-nine more women out there who might fit the profile. They need to be offered protection.”

“They will be,” Renz said.

The phone was silent for a few seconds.

“Then the entire goddamned chain of murders is symbolism,” Renz said. “I don’t see why we should settle on the tongue.”

“The killer apparently took it with him. Maybe that means something.”

“Or not.” Renz was thinking about what else might not mean something. Protecting as many as twenty-nine women around the clock. Three eight-hour shifts times thirty-two. Yeah, find me ninety-six cops with nothing to do, Quinn.

Renz would do what he could.

“Either way, let’s keep this tongue business from the media,” Quinn said. “Only the Skinner and us will know about it. That way we can use it to test for false confessions and weed out all the crazies.”

“Good idea, Quinn. Seems like everybody and their cousins are confessing to these murders, except for the real killer. Keeps our phone lines burning. And sometimes people actually walk into precinct houses and confess. Why the hell do people do that?”

“Maybe the same reason they confess in church,” Quinn said.

“There,” Renz said, “is a scary thought.”

It wasn’t as scary as the ones Quinn was thinking.