Serial

50

New York, the present

The Skinner sat hunched over his chocolate latte at an outside table at Starbucks and stared at the City Beat he’d plucked from a neutered vending machine a block away. The giveaway paper was lying on top of several newspapers the Skinner had bought that morning. The headline infuriated him.

SKINNER, CARVER, CANNIBAL

What on earth…?

He read on, oblivious to the people streaming past nearby on the sidewalk, the rumble and exhaust fumes of traffic, and the morning sun beginning to shine brighter and hotter on the round metal table. His attention was rapt.

Anonymous sources… Unnamed authorities… removed his victim’s tongues for the purpose of cooking and consuming…

He felt sick. He pushed his latte across the table and rested his elbows on the warm iron. How could they possibly believe that? What right did they have to jump to such a conclusion? To lie about him?

Cannibalism! The sick bastards!

Quinn! This has to be Quinn’s doing. He knows it isn’t true. There’s no reason even to imagine such a thing.

It’s so goddamned unfair!

Quinn. He’d somehow gotten the story planted. And this was exactly the kind of reaction he wanted. The idea was to get under his skin. Under the Skinner’s skin.

Well, it wasn’t going to happen. Not in the way Quinn expected. Not with the desired result.

He was calmer now that he had an understanding, or at least a hypothesis, as to what such a breathtakingly absurd accusation was about. And it was in some ways an effective stratagem. What could he do about it? Sue for defamation of character. No, Your Honor, I did not consume the tongues of those women! Would the court break out in laughter or in violence?

He felt himself smile. Good. He had a handle on this now.

This was a demeaning and devious move by Quinn, its aim no doubt to infuriate him and make him careless. But it wouldn’t work. Let the papers print what they wanted. Let the bubble heads on televised news babble. The Skinner knew the truth. Quinn knew the truth. The two of them were locked in a deadly game, and the game board was the city.

So far, the Skinner was way ahead.

He intended to stay ahead.

Now that he had something of a grip on what had happened, he was breathing less raggedly. His rage had turned cold.

So had his latte.

He carried the mug inside and told the acne-scarred kid behind the counter that the latte had been cool when he’d given it to him. The kid listened to his voice, took a look at his face, and promptly made a fresh latte, very hot.

The Skinner returned with it to his table and sat and read newspapers for a while longer. The Times and Post, the Daily News, the real newspapers, hadn’t yet picked up on the cannibalism angle. But the Skinner knew they would. It would be irresistible. Then it would be on televised news (if it wasn’t already), and people would be talking about it. Tongues would wag.

The Skinner laughed out loud at his unintentional play on words.

Laughter! Is that what you expected, Quinn?

“Is this true?” Jerry Lido asked Quinn.

They were in the office. The air conditioner hadn’t caught up with the heat. Vitali and Mishkin had just left to interview two more of the thirty-two prospective killers. Quinn was behind his desk. Lido had just come in. He looked neat this morning-for Jerry Lido. He had on a navy blazer, white shirt, and a red, blue, and gray diagonally striped tie that made him appear to have attended some kind of posh British school. Even his pants were pressed.

“That thing about the tongues and the Skinner,” Lido persisted. “Cannibalism. I saw it on TV news.”

Already? “It might be true,” Quinn said.

“We don’t deal in mights, do we?”

“We try not to.”

“So?”

Quinn gave him a look. “There you are.”

Lido understood. “Hush-hush,” he said, winking. “Shouldn’t have asked.”

“Never hurts to ask,” Quinn said.

“I believed that before I got married.”

“Yeah. Well…”

Lido moved over and sat on the edge of Pearl’s desk. He’d become more and more at home in his position as part of the investigative team. “What about you and Pearl?”

“In what way?” Quinn asked.

“Ever think about marriage?”

“Pearl’s not hot on the idea.”

“How about you?”

Quinn winked as Lido had. “It’s hush-hush.”

“Ah.” Lido glanced around him, as if suddenly surprised to find himself where he was. Quinn knew the look. He knew the sensation, for that matter.

“You had breakfast, Quinn?”

“Sure have.”

“Then it’s not too early to pop around the corner and have a drink.”

“Ten o’clock, Jerry.”

“In this time zone.”

Quinn thought about it. Pearl would arrive soon. It might be a good idea if they were gone when she breezed in. That is, if they were going to ignore time zones.

Pearl would disapprove of morning cocktails at ten. She still didn’t like what Quinn was doing with Jerry Lido. To Jerry Lido. She had a point, Quinn knew, but not a good enough one. Women had died. More were almost certainly going to die. They wouldn’t be pleasant deaths. Quinn and his team were supposed to stop them from occurring.

Simple as that.

“Why not?” he said. “A drink wouldn’t hurt us.”

“Or two.”

Quinn left a note for Pearl saying they’d be back soon. He didn’t mention where they’d gone.

Fedderman sneaked up and surprised Penny in Biographies. She seemed pleased to see him. She was wearing a mauve summer dress today that clung to her figure, white pumps with low heels, a thin silver necklace. Fedderman was wearing the suit.

Penny smelled like cinnamon and old books and perfumed shampoo. Fedderman drew a deep breath of that potpourri and committed it to memory.

He kissed her on her forehead. Her flesh was damp with perspiration though it wasn’t all that warm in the library. “I thought the research room was your department.”

“I’m versatile,” Penny said. “We librarians have to be, in the face of technology run rampant.”

“Complaining again?”

“I shouldn’t. I’m employed.” She lightly touched the back of his hand. “And I’ve got a lot to live for. I think we both do.”

“Which is why I came to see you,” Fedderman said.

“Oh?” She looked at him curiously, waiting.

“That’s it,” Fedderman said. “It’s why I’m here.”

Penny laughed. “Well, it seems to me you should have arrived at work a few hours ago.”

“Our hours are flexible.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “I’m flexible, too.”

Penny shook her head. “I keep seeing new sides of you, Feds. Sides I like. That doesn’t mean I like your jokes.” She glanced up and down the aisle and picked up a book from a cart and slid it into its assigned space on a shelf, between Truffaut and Truman. “Maybe I shouldn’t ask this, but is our relationship diverting too much of your attention away from the investigation?”

“The Skinner? I think you’re more important, Penny.”

“I don’t.”

That brought him up short.

“Remember he murdered my sister, Feds.”

Fedderman felt a rush of shame. Of course she was right. So elated was he over their affair that he’d forgotten it had come at the expense of Nora Noon’s life.

“You’re right, Pen. Damn! I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. It’s just that while I care about you, I don’t want to distract you from your work. Especially since it involves stopping the animal that killed Nora.”

“Do you think about it a lot?” Fedderman asked.

“Only every other minute. And I don’t like knowing the killer is out there walking around free, maybe stalking some other woman. Maybe even me.”

Fedderman gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You can’t believe that, Pen.”

“Why not? He killed my sister.”

“We understand serial killers. They murder compulsively. Their urges are triggered in ways they themselves don’t understand. It would be highly unusual for a serial killer to claim two siblings in two separate murders.”

“You said he acted out of compulsion. If he saw something in Nora that triggered him to kill, maybe he’d see the same thing in me.”

“Pen, tell me you don’t stay awake nights worrying about that.”

“Sometimes I do worry,” Penny said. “I know it might sound crazy.

…”

He bent over and let his lips brush hers. “No, it doesn’t sound crazy. Only human. Notions like that can get a grip on you. But believe me, Pen, it isn’t likely.”

But Fedderman had to admit she had a point. It was something he’d never considered. He understood how, in her position, grieving for a dead sister, she might consider it.

“It only seems possible late at night, in the dark,” she said.

“Like a lot of things,” Fedderman said, thinking about his own nighttime world between wakefulness and sleep, the violence he’d seen, the blood and the faces of the dead. They came unbidden to him more and more often as the years passed.

Penny gave him a smile that looked as if it wanted to fly from her face. “I don’t want you worrying about me.”

“In a strange kind of way, I want to worry about you.”

She sighed. “Yes, that’s how it works. And I want to worry about you. Love and worry are close companions.”

He tried to kiss her again, but she turned away, grinning.

“I think it’s time for you to go to work, Feds.”

“Do you insist?”

“Common sense insists.”

“That’s been getting in the way all my life.” He looked into her eyes. “I don’t want you walking around scared.”

“I’m not. I’m walking around trying to stay employed.”

He nodded, glad she was joking about it now.

Someone had entered the aisle down near the opposite end of the library, so they didn’t kiss good-bye, merely touched hands.

As Fedderman walked past the front desk toward the exit, Ms. Culver gave him a disapproving look over the rims of her glasses, as she always did on his arrival or departure. He wondered if she meant it. If Ms. Culver really felt that way about him. It kind of bothered Fedderman to have somebody like that so strongly disapprove of him when they’d only recently met.

It suggested that she knew more about him than he did.