Urge to Kill

59

Quinn was parking the Lincoln in front of the office when his cell phone chirped. He fished it from his pocket with one hand while spinning the steering wheel with the other to maneuver the nose of the long car toward the curb. Sometimes driving the Lincoln in Manhattan reminded him of captaining an ocean liner in a port crowded with smaller, faster ships.

He pushed the phone’s talk button by feel, said, “Quinn.”

“It’s Feds,” said the voice at the other end of the connection. “I got filled in by Vitali and Mishkin about the Farr shooting. They were close and heard the squeal on their car radio and got to the scene ten minutes after Farr was killed. The shooter, Bertrand Wrenner, was sitting on the front steps of Farr’s building. The victim was sprawled half in, half out of the place, across the threshold. Wrenner was sobbing and still holding the murder weapon. The uniforms first on the scene took it from his hand, then read him his rights.”

Quinn put the shift lever in park and turned off the engine. “He’s confessed?”

“They couldn’t get him to stop confessing.”

“I already heard from Renz on the ballistics tests,” Quinn said. He made no effort to get out of the car; reception was good here, and it was a comfortable, quiet place to talk on the phone. “Smith and Wesson twenty-two caliber. Not our gun. Not our serial killer.”

“Another half-ass duel,” Fedderman said, “only this time the winner got overwhelmed by what he did and broke down right there. Motive, gun, opportunity, witnesses, confession. No way not to get a conviction.”

“Ordinarily,” Quinn said.

“Renz is scared of this one, right?”

“You guessed it, Feds. The media’s already casting the killer as a victim, comparing him to an abused dependent wife. Some T-shirt company is probably already printing FREE BERTY shirts.”

“Berty?”

“That’s what Bertrand Wrenner goes by.” The sun was blasting down on the parked car, heating up the interior. Quinn was ready for the conversation to be over.

“Mishkin said you gotta feel sorry for the little shit,” Fedderman said.

“Mishkin feels sorry for the world.”

“Well, I guess the world could use it,” Fedderman said. “I got copies on the specifics on this one from him and Vitali, crime scene photos, witness statements, the whole investigation so far. It’s all a nice, neat bundle.”

“Bring it to the office and file it, Feds, even though it’s got nothing to do with our case other than it’s the child of political expediency.”

“Okay. Is Pearl with you?”

“No, I thought she might be with you. Maybe she’s in the office. I just pulled up in front.”

“She still worried about her mole?”

“She had it removed. They sent it away for a biopsy so they can let her know for sure everything’s okay.”

“Or if it’s not.”

“That, too.”

“You think she’s really got something to worry about?”

“Plenty, but not necessarily the mole.” The parked car was really heating up. Quinn noticed that he was beginning to perspire. His shirt was starting to stick to him the way Zoe’s clothes had when she’d dressed right after her shower.

“Funny,” Fedderman said, “that was Wrenner’s nickname at work—Mole.”

“Funny old world,” Quinn said, and pressed END. Fedderman was obviously about to get philosophical, and Quinn didn’t think he could abide that.

He climbed out of the uncomfortably warm Lincoln and went up the shallow concrete steps to the office entrance.

The first thing he saw when he went inside was Pearl pacing in the middle of the room, carrying a coffee cup. There were spots on the floor where coffee had sloshed over the rim and dripped. Pearl’s dark eyes were especially vivid in a way that for some reason reminded Quinn of when they’d had sex, and she was nervously flexing and unflexing the fingers of her left hand. Incongruously, she gave him a big white grin.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I think we should take a drive,” she said.

Martin Hawk sat over coffee in the hotel restaurant and stared at his copies of the Post and Times, along with a copy of a much smaller paper, City Beat.

By all accounts, Bertrand Wrenner was nothing more than a common murderer. Certainly not a hunter. The media were referring to Alec Farr’s murder as a duel, but Martin didn’t see how it fit that definition. The victim had simply answered a ring at his door and been shot dead. A homicide. True, he’d been warned, as well as armed. Wrenner had delivered to him a gun with which to defend himself or go on the hunt for his potential killer. Judging by what fellow employees said, it was unlikely that, even afraid and on his guard, Farr could conceive of Bertrand Wrenner—Berty, as the papers called him—constituting a real threat. He hadn’t thought Berty had it in him.

Martin Hawk could have told him that all cornered animals were capable of killing.

Again a server came by his table to make sure Martin didn’t want breakfast today. He reassured her that was the case.

The thought of food made his stomach turn. That he was responsible for the series of murders labeled duels, which were now being cheered on by the media, sickened him and deprived him of appetite.

And filled him with contempt.

Dueling required anger or insult, a face-to-face encounter. A duel was an event brought about by hatred or disdain. But hunting was a pure and sacred tradition, an impulse in the core of all of us. The nearer to the surface it rose, the hungrier we got. Primal? Certainly. That was why it was the stuff of legend and religion. It required danger, a certain respect for one’s prey, a contest of wiliness and wills.

It required stalking.

He set aside City Beat and reached for yet another newspaper he’d bought, a London Times. He leafed through it and found and opened the financial page.

There would be nothing about New York murders or duels in this paper.

Nothing to worry him.