Urge to Kill

30

New York, the present

Pearl and Fedderman were out reinterviewing witnesses. Quinn had assigned them that task mainly because Renz had wanted to meet with him alone.

They were in the sparse but efficient office on West Seventy-ninth Street. Quinn was seated at his desk. Renz was standing across from him, leaning back with his butt propped against the edge of Pearl’s desk, the way Pearl often stood. Quinn wondered if there was something about that spot, the way the two desks were arranged, that induced people to stand that way.

“The Hettie Davis murder,” Renz said. “Hell of a mess.”

“The job takes a strong stomach sometimes,” Quinn said.

“I don’t mean just that kind of mess,” Renz said. “The sort of butchery that was done on the victim, that’s usually not a one-time thing. The bastard treated her like she was some kind of animal he’d killed and was gonna make a rug out of, or something.” He absently toyed with a cellophane-wrapped tip of a cigar protruding with a clipped pen from the pocket of his white shirt. “How likely is it that we’ve got two major psychotic serial killers operating at the same time in the same city?”

“In this city,” Quinn said, “maybe not so unlikely. But whoever killed Hettie Davis might not be a serial killer.”

“We both know better than that,” Renz said. “By the way, she’d had sex, but some time before death. Impossible to know how long, but at least six hours. No sign of forcible entry. No semen, either, so no DNA. Traces of condom lubricant. Might have nothing to do with her murder and she was a random victim.”

“Or maybe it was a crime of passion.”

“Cold-blooded passion,” Renz said. Both men knew there was such a thing. “I had a records search done, and there’s nothing like that kind of killing happened here as far back as it went.”

“So it would be his first,” Quinn said. “At least in this city.”

“All that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the kind of gory, ritualistic murder serial killers commit.”

“But not always serial killers. Not even usually. Maybe she wasn’t a random victim. Maybe there’s something personal in this.”

“Personal?” Renz asked, as if people murdering people they knew were a new concept.

“Killer and victim could have known each other,” Quinn said, “could even have been lovers, and there was something between them that led up to the murder, maybe even over a period of years.”

“I got a good team on it, checking all that out. Vitali and Mishkin.”

Quinn knew both men, and they were top detectives. Sal Vitali was a pushy kind of guy, a hard driver. Harold Mishkin was almost timid, a deep thinker with a weak stomach. Together they got things done. “My guess is they’ll find the victim had a history with the killer,” Quinn said.

“Your guess and my hope. Two psycho freaks terrorizing the city at the same time’s a nightmare scenario.”

“We don’t have that,” Quinn reminded him, almost adding yet.

Renz seemed suddenly to become aware that he was fingering the cigar. “Okay to smoke in here?”

“Sure. Pearl’ll find out—she can smell tobacco smoke at a mile and a half—but that’s okay.”

Quinn waited until Renz had used a thin gold lighter to fire up his cigar, then got one of his Cubans from a desk drawer and lit it with a book match. When Pearl got hissy about the air quality, as she almost certainly would, he could truthfully blame it on Renz.

The two men enjoyed their smokes for a while, not saying anything. Then Renz said, “I’m the goddamn police commissioner and whenever I light up anywhere in this city I feel like I’m back smoking in the boys’ room in high school.”

“You get to be mayor, Harley, and you can change that.”

“Be at the top of my agenda,” Renz said. “Right after bustin’ balls in the NYPD so the murder rate drops. Between that and the smokers’ vote, I don’t see how I can’t get elected.”

Probably, Quinn thought, he was serious.

Renz tilted back his head and blew a series of imperfect smoke rings that created a white pall up near the ceiling. He laughed. “Pearl will be furious.”

“At somebody,” Quinn said.

He simply wasn’t getting it, so Prudence Langton patiently explained it again to the apartment building’s super, a grossly overweight man wearing a dirty gray uniform. He was sweating profusely, causing his dark chest hairs to glisten where the top two buttons of his shirt were unfastened. He was bald, smelled rancid, and wore what looked like a religious symbol on a silver chain around his thick neck. She didn’t consider him dating material.

Prudence had on a fashionable gray pantsuit with a ruffled white blouse. She was wearing her usual Blind Obsession dabbed behind her ears and at the top of her cleavage, but its delicate scent was easily overwhelmed by that of the super. “I was Vera’s roommate in college,” she said. “I knew I was coming to New York on business and wanted to see her. I’ve been calling for two weeks and getting her machine. And I’ve been here twice knocking on her door, and nobody answers.” She leaned toward him, trying not to breathe in. “You do know who I’m talking about?”

“Sure. Miz Doaks, Seven B. I ain’t seen her in quite a while neither, runnin’ in an’ out like she usually does. A regular jogger. Keeps in shape, all right.” His small gray eyes journeyed up and down Prudence as if they had a lascivious mind of their own. “She’s an actress or somethin’. I just figured she had a job outta town. Summer stock theater, or whatever it is them kinda people do.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t that. I talked to her literary agent. He said he’s been trying to get in touch with her, too, and hasn’t had any luck. What I’d like is for you to unlock her apartment so we can see if anything’s happened to her.”

“You mean is she up there dead?”

Pru swallowed. Dead? Not Vera. Not possible. “I’d prefer to think that perhaps she’s sick and unable to get to the phone. Or possibly she’s taken a trip and there’ll be some sign of that.”

“Summer stock,” the super said again. He used a filthy rag to wipe his gleaming face. He seemed to see for the first time the look of apprehension in this obviously refined woman’s eyes. Maybe it was because of him. He didn’t like it that his appearance might be scaring her. Slightly embarrassed he forced a smile. “I been workin’ on the plumbin’,” he explained. “Dirty work.”

“You don’t have to go in yourself,” Pru said, assuming he was concerned about smudging Vera’s apartment. These were two people who definitely couldn’t communicate on the same wavelength. It was more than frustrating for Pru. “I just want to glance around and make sure she isn’t there.”

“Then what?”

Pru’s plan was to go to the police and see if they’d list Vera as a missing person, but she decided not to involve the super in that.

“Then I’ll know,” she said simply.

The super made a big show of considering. “I don’t usually do something like that unless it’s the police or somebody like that askin’. Or unless I know there’s some kinda trouble in a unit.”

“Well,” Pru said, running out of patience, “I can get the police. But time might be important. If Vera’s up there with some sort of health problem and the worst happens, I don’t want to be in any way responsible. Nor do you, I’m sure.”

The prospect of legal responsibility did the trick. “You got a point there.” He untucked the dirty rag from his belt and used it to wipe his hands. “I’ll go get my passkey, and we can take a look-see.”

As they rode the elevator up, he said, “Miz Doaks is one of the nicer tenants here. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her, so I guess it is best we decided to look in on her.”

Covering his ass. Not so dumb. “We have to look out for each other,” Pru said.

“Used to be you didn’t have to,” the super said, “but now you do. In this city, you sure do.”

After he unlocked the door he stood back, obviously intending to stay in the hall. His visitor’s apprehension had proved contagious.

Pru opened the door to a stillness and staleness that suggested the apartment had been unoccupied for some time. She stepped inside, noting that Vera’s home was functional and fairly well decorated.

Immediately she noticed the potted plants on a windowsill. They were brown and dead.

Pru’s heart began to pound as she moved deeper into the small apartment. She held her breath as she glanced in each room.

No sign of Vera.

Now she wished the super had come in with her. She had to make herself open the door to the closet in the bedroom, and to another in the short hall. She had to make sure Vera wasn’t in one of them, that someone hadn’t locked or hidden her out of sight.

But Vera was in neither of the closets. The one in the hall held only linens; the one in the bedroom, what looked like Vera’s full complement of clothes and shoes. Pru made herself peer under the bed. There was nothing there but dust bunnies and two suitcases, one large, one small, both with wheels. Both empty.

It seemed unlikely that Vera was traveling.

When Pru went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator she found sour milk, and green mold on cheese and meat. In the produce drawer were limp brown celery stalks and two shriveled tomatoes.

This wasn’t good. The dead plants, unpacked suitcases, closet full of clothes, and the obviously old contents of the refrigerator. Something was very wrong.

Pru went back into the living room and noticed the phone with its answering machine blinking red, signaling there were messages. She thought about playing the messages and then decided against it. Maybe she shouldn’t touch anything in the apartment.

When she returned to the hall she watched as the super relocked the apartment.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Yes,” Pru said. “She isn’t in there.”

But where is she?

She decided that her next stop would be the nearest NYPD precinct house.

Pearl stood staring at herself in the restroom mirror. She didn’t like admitting that they were getting to her. At odd times of the day or night, she found herself wondering and had to check.

She leaned toward her mirror image and with her right hand bent her right ear forward, tilting her elbow in as she rotated her body to the left.

There, on the right side of her neck, was the mole, usually invisible behind her ear from this angle.

She leaned in closer, turning her head left at an extreme angle while looking right, so she might have a better view.

Larger.

The mole, or brown spot, or whatever it was, was definitely larger than it had been the last time she’d checked.

No. Not definitely.

She realized she was hurting her ear and released it and leaned back away from the mirror.

This was stupid, this constant self-examination. Her mother and Milton Kahn had driven her to this state of mind with their idiotic harping on the mole. Or spot. Or whatever it was. If she was going to keep examining it, she should wait at least a few days so it had time to become larger and she could actually see a difference.

As she started to turn away from the mirror, she couldn’t help herself. She folded her right ear forward and looked again at the mole. Or spot. Or whatever it was.

Not larger.

Not definitely.

What is it?

Something to worry about. That was for sure. You go around day after day and think you’re healthy and secure, and all the time something’s working on you, against you, without you even suspecting it. It could appear harmless, simply a part of you that you’ve gotten used to, but it could kill you as surely as a safe falling on your head, and almost as suddenly. Like your own body deciding it had lived long enough so it was time to turn on you. On itself.

Pearl let her ear flop back in place.

Don ’t be so morose. Don’t think that way.

But she knew it was true. Life could be like that, end like that.

In a boarded-up imported dry goods warehouse in the East Village, Vera Doaks’s hollowed-out corpse dangled motionless in the darkness. Her internal organs were reduced to a coagulated hardened mass an inch thick on the concrete floor, inedible now even to the rats and insects. Other than considerable damage to the feet and hands, the corpse itself was only moderately eaten on, as it was a tricky task even for a resourceful New York rat to traverse the crossbeam and make its way down the rope that bound the ankles. What was left of Vera Doaks was beginning to take on the look of dry mummification.