Pulse Page 2

  Finally Daniel felt strong hands encircle his ankles, exert pressure. Pulling, pulling. As his body began to slide out of the van he stared into Bingham’s eyes and kept the gun pointed directly at his testicles. Bingham didn’t make a sound.

  And then Daniel was free—like a cork out of a bottle.

  “Thanks!” he kept repeating, as he faced into the wind and gained his feet.

  “You guys okay?”

  “We’re—”

  Garvey shut up when he realized the mistake they’d made.

  Daniel stepped close and shot him in the forehead.

  Nicholson wheeled to run and Daniel shot him twice in the back of the neck. He fell and the wind rolled him a few feet and then lost interest. Daniel bent low into the wind and made his way back to the van. Bingham was still inside, curled up and playing dead. Daniel shot him in the testicles and Bingham began to wail. Daniel knew no one would hear even if they were nearby.

  Still cuffed, he began his search for keys.

  Five minutes later Bingham watched through the van’s distorted rear window as a limping Daniel Danielle disappeared into the rain and wind.

  Within minutes the hurricane sweeping across the state hit the area in earnest.

  Chad Bingham would later testify in his hospital bed that Daniel almost certainly died from his wounds or from Hurricane Sophia. There was no way he could have survived out in the open as he’d been, without any nearby shelter.

  It was Bingham who died from his wounds.

  2

  New York State, June 2008

  He couldn’t fly close to New York City, for security reasons. But the pilot, Chancellor Linden R. Schueller of Waycliffe College, made a slight detour so he could have a look from a distance.

  His plane was a small twin-engine Beechcraft that, besides the pilot, could carry five passengers and their light luggage. It could range most of the northeastern states. But this was a short flight from Albany, which was where the chancellor had made the connection via rail, and a cab to the airport, where he’d left the plane. It was complicated but safer that way, using small airports and different modes of conveyance. It meant a less traceable course. But it also meant the chancellor had to take more care about what was in his luggage. You never knew what kind of security checks you’d run into these days, even with a private aircraft, a small airport, and a flight plan that kept him well away from New York City

  Perilous times, Chancellor Schueller thought, and smiled. Absently, he ran his fingertips over the cover of his flight logbook. It was the softest of leathers. He didn’t really need the book now, considering his expertise on the computer, but he enjoyed touching it.

  He pressed his forehead against the oblong Plexiglas window for a better view, then sat back in his seat.

  Some city down there. How many people now? He wasn’t sure, and the figure kept changing depending on whom you asked, or which set of statistics someone wanted to choose.

  Millions, millions ...

  There they were below, layered in tall buildings, moving in every direction above and below ground, in and out of vehicles. They represented every age, size, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious and political slant.... The possibilities were limitless.

  Out the window and behind the plane now was a blue and hazy horizon. The city was falling away like memories of yesterday.

  Minutes and miles passed. The green earth was rising.

  The chancellor forgot about the view and sat straighter in his seat. It was time to change his frame of mind, like slipping from being one person to another.

  He throttled back and put the plane into a shallow bank, careful to keep the nose up. The sun caught the twin props and turned them to liquid light.

  The plane dipped a wing as if saying hello to the earth, now much closer, then began a low, sweeping descent toward the green field below and off to the southwest.

  Gravity asserted a heavier hand. Scraggly lines became roads. Glittering jewels became cars and houses. Water glistened in the sun like molten silver.

  A narrow grass runway was visible now, a slightly different shade of green bisecting the field. Bordering the south side of the field was an arrangement of similar redbrick buildings connected by walkways lined with mature green trees. The buildings’ roofs were identical shades of gray slate. Chancellor Schueller thought it all looked like pieces of a child’s toy train setting. Everything but the train.

  He would be a part of it shortly.

  He would be home. Settled and sated.

  For a while.

  3

  New York, the present

  Macy Collins jerked awake. Unable to breathe in, to breathe out. That was because a rectangle of gray duct tape was fixed tightly across her mouth. The man straddling her had her nose pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

  She panicked, screaming almost silently, thrashing her legs about so she could feel her heels digging into the grass and hard earth. He was seated on her chest, leaning forward so his weight was over her upper body and his legs kept her arms pinned to her sides. The heavy hardness of his knees had made her arms go numb.

  He smiled down at her, then released her nose so she could suck in precious oxygen.

  Her head cleared and she suddenly remembered everything and wished she was still unconscious, that she could die. She craned her neck and stared down at the red, raw flesh where her right breast had been, then up into his eyes that were as human as black pearls. When she looked away she noticed that he had an erection. Even after last night ...

  He was so charming. Then he must have slipped something into her drink. Something that made her compliant enough to agree to a walk in Central Park at dusk.

  It was well past dusk now, but there was a bright moon in a black sky beyond the shadows of the copse of trees where he had lured her. She would be able to see everything she so feared and dreaded.

  He held up a boning knife with a long, lean blade streaked with blood. “I thought you’d want to be conscious for this,” he said. “The first one was so much fun.”

  Macy began thrashing again with her legs as he slowly and deliberately lowered the knife toward her remaining breast. The fear, the pain, sickened her, made her feel faint. She felt herself sliding again into a fearful darkness, yet she welcomed the black void as an escape from this horror. And she might escape from it, because it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t actually be happening.

  Or if it was happening, it was to someone else. In another world, not hers. A world she was dreaming ...

  None of this is real. Not the pain. Not the fear.

  She was drifting, falling....

  He pinched her nose again. Her stopped breath caught in her throat and she was fully conscious again, fully aware.

  Again.

  It was real.

  He was real.

  The knife was real.

  Later, when he was almost finished with her, he removed his pants all the way. He’d previously only unzipped them. He was wearing pale blue panties, which he quickly removed, pausing only to appreciate their silky softness.

  He found the victim’s black thong that he’d earlier taken off and tossed to the side, and slipped it on. He then carefully lifted her legs and put the blue panties on her. She wasn’t quite dead, and unconsciously helped him by bending her knees or pointing her toes.

  He then put his pants back on, and on top of them baggier, triple-pleated pants he’d brought in his attaché case. They were a harsher material, not pleasant to the touch.

  Keeping away from the blood, he knelt next to her and whispered, “Are you still here?”

  But she didn’t hear him. She was in deep shock and on her way to death. He watched her avidly. Watched her eyes.

  Are you still here?

  When the moment arrived, he was ready.

  The last thing he did before leaving was unfold a page from the morning paper and rest it crease-up over her face, like a tent. It was a Macy’s department store sale ad pr
oclaiming EVERYTHING SLASHED.

  Nobody, he thought, had a sense of humor like God.

  4

  Frank Quinn lay sprawled in bed in his brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. He wasn’t quite all the way awake, listening to the slow rhythm of Pearl’s breathing. She was on her side, one bare leg thrown over him, her forehead burrowed into his chest. The morning wasn’t yet hot. The window air conditioner was silent because Quinn had gotten up at 3:30 to relieve his bladder, and the room was cool. Half awake, he’d switched off the laboring window unit as he tottered back to bed.

  It was getting warm again, as the sun rose beyond the stone and brick buildings and the struggling trees on West Seventy-fifth Street. The morning noises of the city had begun—a distant clanging of trash containers, a growing rush of traffic punctuated by the rumbling and growling of trucks and buses, a faraway police siren, a brief shouted exchange down on the sidewalk. Quinn felt pretty good, there in the dawn of wakefulness, his flesh pressed to Pearl’s, his city shaking off the night and coming to life around him.

  The phone by the bed jangled, making him jump. It was an old landline phone that Quinn had owned for years. He kept it because its jarring ring would rouse him from the soundest sleep. And because ... well, it was familiar, well used, and reliable. And it looked like a phone.

  Pearl stirred and said, “Time isht?”

  “Six-thirtyish,” Quinn said, gazing at the glowing digital clock near the phone. The clock actually read 4:37, but that was so early in the morning that Quinn didn’t feel like being precise.

  The phone jangled again. Persistent pest.

  “Let it ring,” Pearl said.

  “We’re cops,” Quinn said. “We don’t let phones ring. We answer them.”

  “We’re private cops.”

  “That’s no different,” Quinn said, as he stretched out an arm and lifted the heavy receiver from its cradle.

  Pearl muttered something he didn’t understand, but it sounded snarky.

  “Quinn,” he said into the cool, hard plastic jammed against the side of his face.

  “I know it is. I’m the guy who called you.”

  Harley Renz. Exactly the last person Quinn wanted to talk to.

  Renz was New York City’s police commissioner, and he didn’t intend to retire from that office. He had bigger plans. He and Quinn had been adversaries for the same positions within the NYPD years ago. Quinn had stayed honest and away from office jobs and unnecessary contact with the higher-ups in the department. Renz was enthusiastically corrupt and ambitious, an unabashed schmoozer and climber. His every move was designed to edge him upward or forward. Quinn was sure he hadn’t called to say howdy.

  He was right.

  “Wanna see a dead body?” Renz asked.

  Quinn couldn’t help glancing down at the nude Pearl, who was awake now and listening to his end of the conversation.

  He took a couple of deep breaths to make sure he was all the way awake. “A homicide victim, I presume.”

  “When you see it you’ll know it’s not just a presumption. I’m looking at it right now.”

  “A woman?”

  “Was.”

  “You know I’ve seen dead women before,” Quinn said, “so there must be something special about this one.”

  “Oh, there is. Come over here and you’ll see why. You’ll also see why the city is going to hire you and your agency.”

  This wouldn’t be the first time Quinn had done work for hire for the city. Renz, the most popular police commissioner in New York’s history, could arrange that with no trouble. He had before. The sleazeball did know how to work the levers of power.

  And he knew not to work them too often, so this murder must be special.

  “You think the killer’s going to be a repeater?” Quinn asked. That was why he often became employed by the city even though he was out of the NYPD. He’d gained a reputation as a unique talent when it came to tracking serial killers. And of course Quinn and Associates, or Q&A, had solved other politically sensitive homicides. In a city as large as New York, there was little downtime between investigations.

  “I think we’ve got a serial killer operating in this town,” Renz said. “We both know that’s usually why I call you. But this time there’s something more to it than that.”

  “Where are you?” Quinn asked.

  “In Central Park, but not very far in. Where Seventy-second Street runs into it, but a little north. Walk up Central Park West and look into the park, over the low stone wall. Where there’s this clump of trees, you’ll see some police cars and a lot of yellow crime scene tape. You can’t miss us.”

  “It’s still dark out, Harley. And don’t tell me you’ve got lights. The city’s been doing nighttime work in the park. I’m just as likely to be walking toward a midnight-shift maintenance crew.”

  “Okay. I’ll meet you right outside the Beymore Arms, opposite the park, and walk you in.”

  “So where exactly is the Beymore Arms?”

  Renz gave him a Central Park West address. “Look for a gray stone building with a green awning out front. It’s down the block from a coffee shop.”

  “Isn’t everything?”

  “Yeah. Even dead people beyond the rejuvenating power of lattes.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Bring Pearl. I know she’s there. I can hear her grinding her teeth.”

  Renz knew Pearl didn’t like him. Nobody really liked Renz except the citizens, who knew only the Renz facade and not Renz.

  “Should we see the victim before or after we eat breakfast ?” Quinn asked.

  “Before, I would say. Though on the other hand, she isn’t going anywhere real soon. And when you learn more about the situation, you’ll see why this one will interest Pearl, too.”

  “I’ll check with Pearl,” Quinn said. “But she might wanna sleep in.”

  “It would behoove her to be here.”

  “What exactly does that mean, behoove?” Quinn asked. “It sounds like something a blacksmith might do to a horse.”

  “You wanna discuss blacksmithing and word roots,” Renz asked, “or do you wanna be introduced to the late Miss Macy Collins?”

  “You make it sound like social networking,” Quinn said.

  “In a way it is. You’ll definitely wanna know people who knew the victim. One person in particular.”

  “Now you’re making it sound like a quiz show.”

  “Yeah. Well, it isn’t that. I guarantee you Pearl won’t think so, either.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “I’ll wake her up.”

  “I’m awake,” she said, from somewhere beneath Quinn’s unshaven jaw.

  “Renz wants—”

  “I heard him,” Pearl interrupted. “Tell him to go fu—”

  Quinn moved the receiver away as far as he could, then turned his head so he could speak to Renz. “She says she’s on her way.”

  “I thought I heard her talking. She got a message for me?”

  “That was it,” Quinn said. “More or less.”

  5

  Quinn and Pearl found the Beymore Arms with no trouble. Renz was waiting for them beneath the green canopy. He was wearing a well-tailored blue suit, a white shirt, and a red and black striped tie. He looked ready to broadcast the evening news, but the clothes didn’t disguise the fact that he’d put on even more weight since becoming police commissioner.

  The three of them waited for a break in traffic that was already starting to build on Park Avenue West, and then fast-walked across the street. Fat as he was, Renz moved quickly and gracefully. They climbed over the low, age-darkened stone wall that bordered the park. Quinn was curious to see if Renz would go over the wall that way, which involved not much more than boosting up the body, then sitting, and swiveling. Renz clambered over the low wall with impressive nimbleness. Didn’t do his tailored suit much good.

  They walked across dew-damp grass toward a cluster of trees that emitted a faint white glow. Then Qui
nn saw the crime scene tape, and that the glow was coming from a white tent that was eight or ten feet square. Shadow movement on the taut white material indicated a lot of activity inside.

  A tall, poker-faced uniform posted outside the flap entrance to the tent seemed not to pay them any attention. Renz stood to the side of the flap and motioned with an arm for them to enter, but he stayed outside in the interest of giving people in the tent more room to move.

  What was going on inside the tent was nothing like social networking, even with the Napoleonic and twisted little medical examiner, Dr. Julius Nift, smiling from where he stood over the body and saying, “Miss Macy Collins, may I present Frank Quinn and Pearl Kasner.” He made a motion with his hand, palm up. “Pearl, Quinn, this is—”

  “Just shut up,” Pearl said.

  The tent had no floor and was illuminated by brilliant lights on flimsy-looking metal stands. Quinn had to duck his head slightly, but Pearl could stand up straight. Where there was room to move, two CSU guys were using it, carefully tweezering up possible evidence and placing it in plastic evidence bags. They were dressed in white and wearing white gloves and looked as if they’d arrived in a box with the tent.

  What was left of the victim lay on bent and bloodstained grass. A rectangular flag of gray duct tape clung by a corner to her lower lip. Her bulging brown eyes bespoke horror.

  She was on her back with her arms taped to her sides, her legs together, toes turned down as if frozen that way by painful spasms. Her body was arranged with a symmetry and neatness suggesting she’d been posed after death. She was wearing only blue panties. Both of her breasts had been removed.

  “Her breasts—” Quinn began.

  “Haven’t found them,” Nift said. “Judging by the removal circumference, she must have had quite a rack.”

  Quinn was aware of Pearl stiffening beside him. “Sick necrophiliac,” she said under her breath.

  Nift heard her and smiled. He enjoyed getting under people’s skin, and Pearl was a favorite target.