Carnage: Short Story Read online

  Highest Praise for

  John Lutz

  “John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”

  —Harlan Coben

  “Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster

  of a tale.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  “John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”

  —Ridley Pearson

  “John Lutz is a major talent.”

  —John Lescroart

  “I’ve been a fan for years.”

  —T. Jefferson Parker

  “John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”

  —Tony Hillerman

  “Lutz ranks with such vintage masters

  of big-city murder

  as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Lutz is among the best.”

  —San Diego Union

  “Lutz knows how to seize and hold the

  reader’s imagination.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar

  and two Shamuses.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Twist

  “One of the top ten mystery novels of 2013.”

  —The Strand Magazine

  Pulse

  “Grisly murders seen through the eyes of killer

  and victim; crime scenes from which clues slowly

  accumulate; a determined killer . . . compelling.”

  —Booklist

  “One of the ten best books of the year.”

  —The Strand Magazine

  Serial

  “Wow, oh wow, oh wow . . . that’s as simple as I can put it.

  You gotta read this one.”

  —True Crime Book Reviews

  Mister X

  “A page-turner to the nail-biting end . . . twisty,

  creepy whodunit.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  Urge to Kill

  “A solid and compelling winner . . . sharp

  characterization, compelling dialogue and graphic

  depictions of evil.... Lutz knows how to keep

  the pages turning.”

  —BookReporter.com

  Night Kills

  “Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  In for the Kill

  “Shamus and Edgar award–winner Lutz gives us

  further proof of his enormous talent . . . an

  enthralling page-turner.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Chill of Night

  “The ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz

  is in rare form.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A dazzling tour de force . . . compelling, absorbing.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  Fear the Night

  “A tense, fast-moving novel, a plot-driven page-turner of

  the first order . . . a great read!”

  —Book Page

  Darker Than Night

  “Readers will believe that they just stepped off a Tilt-A-

  Whirl after reading this action-packed police

  procedural.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  Night Victims

  “John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror. . . . He

  propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”

  —Sun-Sentinel

  The Night Watcher

  “Compelling . . . a gritty psychological

  thriller.... Lutz draws the reader deep into the

  killer’s troubled psyche.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Final Seconds

  “Lutz always delivers the goods, and this is

  no exception.”

  —Booklist

  ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ

  *Twist

  *Pulse

  *Switch (e-short)

  *Serial

  *Mister X

  *Urge to Kill

  *Night Kills

  *In for the Kill

  Chill of Night

  Fear the Night

  *Darker Than Night

  Night Victims

  The Night Watcher

  The Night Caller

  Final Seconds (with David August)

  The Ex

  Single White Female

  * featuring Frank Quinn

  Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and Pinnacle Books

  Carnage

  THE PREQUEL TO FRENZY

  JOHN LUTZ

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  For Marilyn Davis

  1

  Florida, two years ago

  An hour after killing the girl on her summer vacation, the killer took the coast road north.

  To his right the morning sky was dark, with low gray clouds. He was sure that out at sea, rain must be falling. Straight ahead, what he calculated was true north, sunlight lanced through the clouds and lay golden on the winding road. As he drove he reran the murder over and over in his mind, finding new angles, fresh perspectives. It got better each time.

  The girl—Taylor Reminger—had been easy prey, a naïve and pliable young woman, especially with a few doctored drinks in her. He’d been so nice to her—oh, he could be a charmer—that they were in her motel room before sundown. His every move was practiced and economical. He’d perfected his routine over the past several years. Within the hour, he’d had her taped tightly and gagged.

  That’s when the fun began.

  When she’d regained consciousness, Taylor opened her eyes and met the real true him.

  He’d been learning with each victim. She had experienced the blade and the flame, and had spent the rest of the night dying in pain, making desperate noises that barely escaped her taped lips and wadded pillow. Her pleas near the end were scarcely recognizable as human.

  When, finally, she died, he looked into her eyes and knew he had gotten all of her.

  He smiled as he drove. He would remember Taylor. She died well and would stand out in memory among the others. She was special.

  Or maybe he was simply getting better.

  Directly in front of the car, three pelicans in perfect V formation like aircraft arced across the sky. Surely some kind of omen.

  The killer, who carved the letters D.O.A. in his victims’ foreheads, had come to be known simply as that: “D.O.A.” In his estimation, not enough people had heard of him. So far, he and his relatively few murders (he’d started this latest spate of killings in Miami) were simply local news. This northward jaunt, leaving a bloody string of murders like a comet’s tail, would alert everyone along the eastern seacoast to the danger and terror. New York media would soon come to understand the pattern and path of the murders. No media could cover series killings better than the New York news. They would pursue every tidbit of information as if they were starving wolves, and give it an importance that made legend. The strength of the pack.

  The killer tightened his grip on the steering wheel and thought about New York City. All that movement. All those voice
s. All those people. Jostling each other. Breathing each other’s breath. Terror was contagious and traveled fast among them. Especially the young single women, trying to make New York their own personal big apple.

  What a wonderful town.

  He’d get there eventually. There was no rush. Let them contemplate his approach.

  The road curved, and a brightening reflection lay like a squirming chimera on the gleaming black hood of the rented Chevy. It had been easy enough to use phony documentation to rent the car for a month. Somewhere farther north, he would make sure it was clean of fingerprints or any other identifying factors—perhaps burn the vehicle—then find some other mode of transportation

  His plan was simple and as inescapable as fate.

  He would kill along the way. All the way to New York City and beyond. “Beyond” was important to the killer, but New York was special to him because of the famous Frank Quinn.

  Quinn, or one of his minions, would soon understand the killer’s intent. But understanding it was a long way from being able to stop it.

  The morning was heating up, and the killer had the Chevy’s air conditioner on high. He also had the front windows lowered about six inches so he could hear the surf. There hadn’t been much surf on the other coast, the Gulf coast. The waters there were much calmer. That was a shame, because there were indistinct but undeniable messages in the surf. Voices that knew secrets, and shared them.

  As well as receiving information indirectly in surprising ways, D.O.A. watched the local and national TV news. And he read the newspapers. Not religiously, but he read them.

  That was how he’d learned about Quinn. And how he’d learned even more, in the papers’ morgues of back editions.

  Quinn was a former NYPD homicide detective who was justice personified. Or injustice. Depending on where you sat on the scales, and how much weight the justice or injustice upon you moved the needle. Quinn moved the justice scales a great deal. He was a big man, walking with a slight limp from being shot in the leg. One of those rugged types who seemed to get more rugged in middle age, and even when they were well beyond fifty. Which Quinn was. Not a handsome man, and with strong-boned features that were almost thuggish, he nevertheless had a reassuring effect on women. He looked like a guy who could take a punch and come back. Who would, if he was on your side, be there for you no matter what. At some point it usually came as a surprise to those who knew him that he had about him a roughhewn sophistication. Music, Cuban cigars, and Broadway productions were among his obsessions.

  Quinn, retired from the NYPD, had opened his own investigative agency: Quinn and Associates Investigations. Or simply Q&A.

  His specialty was serial murders.

  So was D.O.A.’s.

  2

  New York, the present

  Frank Quinn sat at his desk in the office of Q&A on West 79th Street. The arrangement of desks and chairs was parallel, much as in a squad room, a reflection of Quinn’s years as an NYPD homicide detective. The other detectives, also lately of the NYPD, felt right at home in such a setting. They were Quinn’s former partner in the department, Larry Fedderman, Quinn’s live-in lover, Pearl Kasner, and detectives Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin. All were former NYPD detectives. Q&A’s brilliant computer nerd, Jerry Lido, had drunk his way out of the department years ago. Only Pearl’s daughter, Jodi, an attorney and sometimes Q&A employee, had no experience as a cop. She seemed not to see that as a disadvantage.

  The old West Side building was cooled with two large air-conditioning units set in oversized barred windows. One of the units was running too hard and making a vibrant hum.

  The street door made its distinctive swishing sound, and a very tall, muscular redheaded woman in jogging clothes came in. She wore no makeup to disguise her freckles, and her thick, short hair looked as if it had been trimmed with a hacksaw. This was Helen Iman, a profiler with the NYPD. She exuded a scent of sweat and soap, like an athlete fresh from the shower. Helen was the only profiler Quinn had faith in. Not because she seemed to have a special talent the others didn’t possess, but because of her record. Quinn couldn’t deny the success of some of her insights and reasoning.

  In her left hand was a sheaf of envelopes and advertisements. She was wearing shorts, and the long muscles in her thighs and calves flexed as she walked across the room and dropped what she was carrying onto Quinn’s desk.

  “Your mail,” she said. “I caught the postal carrier just as she was about to stuff it into your box. Told her I’d bring it in.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Harold Mishkin asked. He sounded serious. Maybe he was. With Harold, sometimes it was hard to know.

  “Technically,” his partner Sal growled in his gravel-pan voice.

  “You want me to go back to the lobby and jam all this into the box?” Helen asked.

  Quinn ended the discussion by reaching out and dragging the mail across the desk to him, noting that his detectives were getting testy. Probably because of the heat wave that was torturing New York. He liked it when they were irritable. That was when they did their best work.

  Quinn saw, in with the envelopes and fliers, something small and rectangular and wrapped in brown paper and tape. It was addressed to him personally in neat, black printed letters that would leave a handwriting analyst nothing but guesswork.

  “I was wondering about that, too,” Helen said.

  Quinn held the package up between thumb and forefinger. “Was this delivered with the rest of the mail?”

  “Yeah. Renz got one just like it an hour ago.”

  “That why he sent you here?”

  “Yeah. He might want me in on this one.”

  That piqued Quinn’s curiosity. Police Commissioner Harley Renz, Quinn’s longtime friend and enemy, sometimes hired Q&A to work in conjunction with the NYPD—with Quinn in charge of the case.

  Helen the profiler was often part of the work for hire arrangement. Sometimes she was as good as a seer. Sometimes she was a seer.

  Renz was more politician than cop, and always had in mind whatever higher office he might reach. In a few years, mayor might be a possibility. If Renz could find enough dirt to smear on whoever would dare to be his opponent.

  It wasn’t impossible that Renz would be elected. He was probably the most popular police commissioner the city had ever known—because the voters didn’t really know him.

  But did the voters really know anyone?

  Renz was brilliant at accruing credit for other people’s achievements, and pinning blame on others for his mistakes.

  Helen the profiler nodded toward the tightly wrapped package and said, “My guess is it contains the same thing that was in the commissioner’s package.”

  Quinn didn’t like the tone of her voice. “Is it going to blow up or in other ways cause my fingers to fall off?”

  Helen shrugged. “Might.”

  The package was so thoroughly wrapped that there was more tape visible than paper. Quinn got a sharp letter opener from a desk drawer and broke into it neatly.

  He found a small rectangular cardboard box. It was the kind of thing a bracelet might come in. He glanced at Helen, then carefully lifted the box’s lid.

  Whatever was inside was wrapped in a cut-out square of folded newspaper. It was part of a three-days-old Miami Herald, featuring an editorial about the Federal deficit. It was too large.

  Quinn slowly unfolded the paper, and stared at the object revealed. He tilted the paper so it dropped almost noiselessly onto the desktop.

  “A plastic chess piece,” he said. “The queen.”

  “Just like Renz’s.” Helen said.

  “The most mobile and dangerous piece on the chess board,” Harold noted.

  Sal stared at him. “I didn’t know you played chess,” Sal said.

  “I watch it on TV,” Harold said.

  “Well,” Helen said, “they televise soccer.”

  There was another, smaller square of newspaper in the box, this one neatly creased. Quinn carefully
unfolded it and smoothed it out.

  It was part of the front page of the Spindrift Bugle, a weekly giveaway.

  Spindrift was one of many small beach resort towns along the coast highway. It boasted the usual resort amenities: souvenir shops, a public beach with showers, a food hutch, a place that rented bicycles and scuba equipment, a booth that sold parasol rides . . .

  It was the kind of place where fun should happen. Not murder.

  3

  The killer sat back in the rental Chevy and watched the little ocean-side town north of Nickleton glide past. The usual beach houses, motels, and too-cute restaurants. The franchises dotting the beach road on the landward side. More expensive eateries and shops on the beach side. The sun worshipers on their multicolored beach towels dotted the sandy slope to the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were lapping quietly at the shore this calm day.