Through The Grinder

Twenty

“But nobody questions your morals,

And nobody asks for the rent,

There’s no one to pry, if we’re tight, you and I,

Or demand how our evenings are spent….”

Somewhere under the East River, Matt turned to me and recited those lines from “Life Among the Artists,” a nearly century-old ditty written by journalist and radical John Reed, who’d lived for a time in New York.

“And?” I asked when he was done. “What are you getting at?”

“This town is the perfect place for people like Toddie the painter boy back there, people who want to escape their pasts. In New York, people may see you, but they don’t know you. And they might even know you, but they don’t really know you.”

“Matt?”

“You’re out of leads, Clare — ”

“No, I’m not — ”

“Listen to me. You admitted that Seth Todd was as charming as Bowman. He’s probably sensitive and sweet, too, when he’s not in a murderous rage. You may think you know Bowman, but he may turn out to be exactly like Todd. That may be the real reason Bruce moved to New York City, to escape other ‘accidents’ in his past. Certainly, your meeting with Todd should at least make you stop and consider it.”

I shook my head.

“Consider it, Clare. I think you have to begin to acknowledge the possibility that Quinn was right.”

I slumped back against the cold, orange plastic subway seat and wrapped my shearling tighter around me, trying to feel the warmth of Bruce again.

As we rumbled out from under the river and toward the first underground stop in Manhattan, we passed a slower train on a parallel track. The people appeared like ghosts in the darkness, their heads and torsos surreally floating by in the frame of the other train’s windows. I thought of Valerie then. How her body had been mutilated on one section of these miles and miles of subway tracks, and despite the shearling, a shiver ran through me.

“Clare, come on. When you walked out of Todd’s studio, you bluntly admitted to me that he surprised you. That you never would have guessed he was a murderer — ”

“But I only just met Seth Todd. I haven’t spent time getting to know him. I haven’t snuck around his place and read his e-mails, and — ”

“ — you haven’t slept with him.”

Matt’s raised voice drew some glances in the subway car. Two Hispanic teenage boys snickered then looked away. An old Filipino woman narrowed her eyes at us, then shook her head and went back to reading her paper.

“Let’s table this discussion,” I whispered, then slumped back in the hard, plastic seat and once again closed my eyes — trying to close out Matt’s words with them. Instead of considering Bruce’s guilt, I wanted to consider the facts.

Fact: Bruce was innocent. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a fact yet to Quinn or Matt but it was to me. I knew it. I just had to prove it.

Once again, I thought about Valerie Lathem. But not the dead Valerie. The live one. The Valerie that had been dating Bruce for a short time.

Bruce had met Valerie through her job at a travel agency — and that simple fact was probably all Detective Quinn wanted to focus on right now.

Obviously, the detective had begun eyeing Bruce as a suspect when the evidence at Inga’s crime scene had turned up a note signed with a B. So it made perfect sense for Quinn to stop asking questions about Valerie’s love life once he discovered Bruce’s basic connection to her.

But Bruce had revealed to me that it was Valerie who’d turned him on to the SinglesNYC site, which meant she had been using the same on-line dating service as Inga Berg. Maybe Quinn knew this already, or maybe he didn’t. To me, however, it seemed like a significant connection to pursue.

Okay, I admit that Quinn wasn’t wrong to focus on Bruce Bowman, the one man connecting Valerie and Inga (and Sahara, too, for that matter), but the detective wasn’t convinced of Bruce’s innocence, and I was. So there had to be another man connected to some or all of them.

If Valerie and Inga were killed by the same guy, chances were good that the guy who killed them probably met them both through that on-line dating site. All Matt and I really had to do was cross-check the site names. Whichever guy showed up on the dating lists for both of these women had to be a viable suspect.

And, frankly, if Sahara McNeil’s name showed up as a registered user of the SinglesNYC dating site, too, I wouldn’t be surprised. After all, Sahara had turned up at Cappuccino Connection night, which meant she’d been mate shopping — so it was highly possible that she may have tried SinglesNYC.

Bottom line: If I could find the one guy, other than Bruce, who was associated with all three women, I’d probably have my killer. And I’d happily serve him up to Quinn on a platter finer than Torquemada’s.

“Yes. There is a new lead,” I murmured, almost to myself, my eyes still closed. “SinglesNYC.com.”

“What?”

“Matt, listen to me.” I opened my eyes and turned to face him. “This isn’t just about my being charmed or duped by Bruce. This is about me trusting my own judgment. It took me a long time to believe in myself, but I do. And I trust that I’m right on this. I have one more lead I need to check out. It’s an important one. Can’t you trust me, just a little longer?”

From a safe distance, the Genius followed the bubbly girl as she left the Village Blend. Her thousand dollar shearling was easy to spot in the crowd of Old Navy pea-coats, leather jackets, and cheap synthetic parkas.

There was no plan here. None.

The Genius didn’t care. Something could be improvised. The Genius was truly gifted with improvising, and this girl had just gone too far tonight, teasing him unmercifully, laughing and flirting with him for a solid hour before rising to go.

The girl walked east from Hudson, toward Seventh Avenue South.

Good, thought the Genius. Very good. Perfect.

The Saturday night streets were crowded with college students and partygoers, straight and gay couples, uptown slummers, bridge-and-tunnel kids, night club groupies, drunks and drag queens. The carnival was nowhere thicker and louder and chaotic than Seventh Avenue South.

On a corner near a college bar, the crowd had overflowed onto the sidewalk. The bus stop midway down the block was the perfect nexus.

Joy strode to the corner and waited for the light to change, ready to cross the wide boulevard. A blonde young man with a goatee said something to her. She turned and smiled.

Good, thought the Genius, go ahead and tease the boy. You like to tease, and you’ll be just distracted enough for the improvised plan to work.

Here it comes, the Downtown M20, speeding right along, swerving toward the curb to get to the stop half a block down. Here it comes, your last stop, Joy Allegro.

The crowd was thick, and the shove was easy, no one could even tell who’d sent the girl off the curb and right into the path of the oncoming monster.

For the Genius, this final impact would be the sweetest, most satisfying of all…