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  The corpse was unaffected by any of it. Its pale blue eyes, widened in horror, gazed off at some far horizon they would all at some time see. Quinn felt a chill race up his spine. Hours ago this bloody, discarded thing on the floor had been a vital and perhaps beautiful woman.

  “How old do you estimate she was?” Quinn asked Nift.

  It was Renz who answered. “Twenty-three. And it’s not an estimate.”

  “You got a positive ID?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah,” Renz said.

  He leaned over the corpse and lifted it slightly off the carpet, turning it so Quinn could see the victim’s back.

  Her shoulders and the backs of both arms were covered with old burn scars. Quinn had similar scars on his right shoulder and upper arms.

  “The killer didn’t do that to her back,” Renz said, returning the body to its original position.

  Quinn looked again at the victim’s features, trying to imagine them without the distortion of horror and the scarlet stains.

  He felt the blood recede from his face. Then he began to tremble. He tried but couldn’t stop the tremors.

  “It’s Millie Graff,” Renz said.

  3

  After the body of Millie Graff had been removed, Quinn walked with Renz through a fine summer drizzle to a diner a few blocks away that was still open despite the late hour. They were in a back-corner booth and were the only customers. The old guy who’d come out from behind the counter to bring their coffee was now at the other end of the place, near the door and the cash register. He was hunched over as if he had a bent spine, reading a newspaper through glasses with heavy black frames.

  Renz looked miserable, obviously loathing his role as bearer of bad news. Quinn was surprised to find himself feeling sorry for him. Though they held a mutual respect for each other’s capabilities, the two men weren’t exactly friends. Renz was an unabashed bureaucratic crawler fueled by ambition and unencumbered by any sort of empathy or decency. He’d stepped on plenty of necks to get where he was, and he still wasn’t satisfied. Never would be. Quinn considered Renz to be an insatiable sociopath who would say anything, do anything, or use anyone in order to get what he wanted. Renz considered Quinn to be simply unrealistic.

  “I haven’t seen Millie in almost fifteen years,” Quinn said.

  “She healed up, grew up, and became a dancer,” Renz said. “Saved her money so she could leave New Jersey and live here in New York. She was gonna break into theater.” He sipped his coffee and made a face as if he’d imbibed poison. “I got all this from her neighbors. She worked in the Theater District, but was waiting tables in a restaurant.” He shrugged. “Show biz.”

  “How long’s she been in the city?” Quinn asked.

  “Five months.”

  Quinn gazed out the window and thought back to when he’d first seen Millie Graff. She’d had metal braces on her teeth and was screaming with her mouth wide open and mashed against the closed window of a burning car.

  He’d simply been driving along on Tenth Avenue in his private car, off duty, when traffic had come to a stop and he’d seen smoke up ahead. Quinn had gotten out of his car and jogged toward the smoke. When he got closer to the gathering mass of onlookers he saw that a small SUV was upside down, propped at an angle with its roof against the curb. It was on fire.

  The vehicle was not only on fire. Its gas tank was leaking, and the resultant growing puddle of fuel was blazing. The crowd, sensing an explosion any second, was moving well back, occasionally surging forward slightly, pulled by curiosity and repelled by danger. The woman who’d been driving the SUV was upside down with her head at an awkward angle. Quinn figured her neck was broken.

  The girl pressing her face against the window and screaming was eight-year-old Millie Graff. She’d apparently gotten her safety belt unbuckled and was trying to crawl out. But the door was jammed shut and the window remained closed. He saw the frantic girl make a motion as if she was trying to open the window, and then shake her head back and forth, desperately trying to tell someone looking on that the window was jammed.

  Quinn moved toward the car and felt someone grip his shirtsleeve. A short man with brown eyes popped wide was trying to hold him back. “It’s gonna blow any moment!” he yelled at Quinn. “Smell that gas! You can’t go over there!”

  When Quinn drew his big police special revolver from its belt holster the man released him and moved back. That was when Quinn saw the blue uniform over by a shop window. A young PO standing with his back pressed against a wall. Quinn waved for him to come over and help. The man didn’t move. A New York cop, frozen by fear.

  Forgetting everything else, Quinn ran to the SUV and began pounding on the window with the butt of his revolver, holding the cylinder tight so it remained on an empty chamber and wouldn’t allow the gun to fire accidentally. The girl inside pressed her hand against the glass and he motioned for her to move back.

  She did, and a series of blows rendered with all his strength broke the glass. It didn’t shatter much, but enough so that he could grip the shards and pull them out. He removed his shirt and used it so he wouldn’t cut his hands as he tried to pry the rest of the window out.

  The girl caught fire. She began screaming over and over, trying to beat out the flames with her bare hands. Quinn could see the flames spreading across the back of her blouse, reaching for her hair.

  The sight gave him strength he didn’t know he had, and what was left of the window popped from the frame.

  He reached through the window, grabbed the girl’s arm, and dragged her from the vehicle. Pain made him realize he was on fire, too. Both of them were burning.

  That was when Quinn glanced beyond the girl, to the other side of the car. And through his pain and fear he saw a distorted miniature face and waving tiny hands in an infant seat. A screaming child. A baby.

  Aware now of more flames in the street around him, more burning gasoline, he slung the wriggling young girl over his shoulder and ran with her across the street. He gave her to reaching arms. Hands slapped at him, and someone threw a shirt over him to smother the flames.

  He saw the young cop still frozen against the wall. Quinn screamed around the lump in his throat: “There’s a baby in there, other side, rear, in an infant seat!”

  The man didn’t move, only stared straight ahead.

  Quinn shoved people away and ran back toward the burning SUV, ignoring the pleas for him to stay away. He was aware of sirens. Fire trucks down the street, a block away. Too far away. The flames inside the car were spreading. The vehicle was filling with smoke.

  He glanced back and saw the young girl he’d dragged from the wreck huddled on the sidewalk, surrounded by people. A man was bending over her, maybe a doctor.

  Quinn continued running toward the burning SUV.

  The explosion knocked him backward. He remembered being airborne, then the back of his head hitting solid concrete.

  Then nothing was solid and he was falling.

  When he regained consciousness the next day in the hospital, he was told the girl he’d pulled from the SUV had seconddegree burns on her upper back and arms, but she was alive. The driver of the vehicle, a teenage sister, was dead. So was the infant in the backseat, their little brother, ten months old.

  Quinn had been proclaimed a hero, and the Times ran a photo of him posing with the family of the dead and their one remaining child—Millicent Graff.

  The young officer who’d gone into shock and been unable to help Quinn, and perhaps rescue the infant, was fired from the NYPD for dereliction of duty.

  The NYPD had sort of adopted Millie Graff. Renz had used the charming child as a political prop, but that was okay because it was obvious that he also felt genuine affection for her.

  And now—

  “Quinn.”

  Renz, across the diner booth, was talking to Quinn.

  “Sorry,” Quinn said. “Lost my concentration for a minute.”

  “Where’d you go?” Renz asked, with a
sad smile.

  He knew where.

  Quinn felt the beginnings of another kind of flame, deep in his gut, and knew what it meant. In a way, he welcomed it.

  This killer had taken away forever something precious that fifteen years ago Quinn had saved. Now he had to be found. He would be found. Quinn wanted it even more than Renz might imagine.

  This was personal.

  4

  Renz tried the coffee again, put the cup back down, and shoved it away. “Camel piss.” He looked hard at Quinn across the diner table. “You and your investigative agency want this one?”

  “Can you convince the higher-ups to turn it over to us?”

  “I am the higher-up,” Renz said. “You might be off the force, along with your retread detectives, but when it comes to serial killers no one can top you. I’ll make it clear to everyone from the mayor on down that nailing this sicko is priority number one and we have to use our best. If we don’t, and there are more murders, there’ll be plenty of blame for all the people who wanted a second-rate investigation. That’s a smelly political albatross to have hanging around your neck in this city.”

  So Renz had his own political motives for wanting this killer brought down fast. Well, that was fine, if it put Quinn on the case. “You sure we got a serial killer?”

  “You know we do, Quinn. We both know this guy will kill again, and probably soon. The way he . . . the things that were done to Millie, that kinda asshole is gonna be a repeater.”

  “Probably,” Quinn conceded.

  “And this case interests you. It needs you like you need it. Like I need you. It’ll be like before. We’re not bypassing the NYPD. The city will employ you and your agency on a work-for-hire basis to aid in the investigation. Of course, you’ll be running it.”

  Quinn knew that what Renz needed or wanted, he would get. Renz was the most popular police commissioner the city had ever known. Not to mention that he had something on almost everyone above him in the food chain. In New York, even if it meant going to jail later, a popular police commissioner with that kind of leverage wielded real power.

  But Quinn did have some reservations.

  “Because of Millie, I’ve got a serious personal interest in this case, Harley. We’ve never done anything like this exactly.”

  “Nothing is ever like anything else exactly. Think snowflakes.”

  Quinn sat drumming his fingertips on the table. There really was little doubt that Millie’s killer would strike again.

  “Don’t give me all that contemplation bullshit,” Renz said. “We both know you’re in. I’ll write up the contract we had before, only for more money. I want this bastard in the worst way, Quinn.”

  “I can see that, Harley. But you don’t want him more than I do.”

  “So we got a deal?”

  Quinn stopped with the fingers. “Yeah.”

  “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

  “Let it.”

  5

  It was almost 2 A.M. when Quinn let himself into his apartment on West Seventy-fifth Street. The apartment comprised the first floor of a brownstone that was two buildings down from the building where Quinn had lived for a while with his now ex-wife May, and then for a shorter period of time with Pearl.

  He was trying to get Pearl to leave her tiny apartment and move into the brownstone with him. She wasn’t high on the idea. She would spend time with him there, and had even slept over a few times on the sofa, when it was late at night and the subway had stopped running. She’d never had sex with him there, or anywhere else, since her fiancé Yancy Taggart had died saving her life.

  Quinn was moving slowly and carefully with Pearl. She was still grieving for Yancy, even though almost a year had passed since his death. Quinn understood that, and he took it into account whenever Pearl acted up.

  Yancy had been a good man. And he and Pearl might have made a go of their marriage. Quinn had been sorry about what happened to Yancy, too. But time passed, and life continued beyond the point where Yancy had died saving Pearl’s life.

  And though it might be bad form and a mistake, the truth was that Quinn wanted Pearl back.

  Something rattled upstairs. Then came a metallic ping, and what sounded like a board dropping flat on the floor. Quinn chose to ignore the noise. He’d investigated such things before and found nothing. The old building was prone to make unexpected, unexplainable sounds.

  The brownstone had been built in 1885, and it showed its age. Quinn had bought it with some of his settlement from the city. He’d seen it as an investment, and was rehabbing the upstairs, converting it to two spacious apartments that could be rented out to make the mortgage payments. However, if Pearl eventually moved in with him, only the top floor would be rented. The second floor, with its turned oak woodwork and beautiful original crystal chandelier, would be theirs on a daily basis.

  Quinn had even from time to time considered offering one of the apartments to Pearl to rent. It would bring her physically closer. Another step toward them moving in together.

  Sometimes even Quinn wondered if that eventuality was possible. He didn’t underestimate the obstacles.

  He and Pearl were both difficult to live with, because neither could completely overlook the other’s faults.

  Or maybe they were characteristics. Even virtues. Quinn was obsessive in his work, a solver of the human puzzle and a dedicated, even merciless hunter. He might have stepped from the pages of the Old Testament, only his religion was Justice. He was controlled and patient and relentless.

  Pearl was equally obsessive about her work, but not as controlled, and certainly not as patient.

  Quinn might be mistaken for a plodder, until you realized that not one step was wasted or taken in a wrong direction. Then you knew you were watching a deliberate, heat-seeking missile, and God help his target. When whoever he was hunting moved this way or that, Quinn could be fooled only for a short while. He was tireless, he was inexorable, and, ultimately, he could be deadly.

  Pearl, on the other hand, seemed to have been born with a burr up every orifice. She was direct and tough, and her moods ranged all the way from irritated to enraged. While Quinn was slathering his phony Irish charm on a suspect, Pearl would be waiting to kick the suspect where it hurt the most. Suspects seemed to sense that.

  Quinn went into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and removed his boxy, size-twelve black shoes. Sometimes, in the faint glow of the nightlight, he would imagine that Pearl was there asleep. Though in her early forties, she looked almost like a child. Her raven black hair spread like a shadow on her pillow. Even in repose her strong features and dark eyebrows, her fleshy red lips, were vivid and gave Quinn moments of breathlessness. She was a small woman, slightly over five feet tall, but beneath the thin white sheet that covered her, the curves of her compact, buxom form were the timeless landscape of love. She was Quinn’s everywoman, yet he knew that in all the world there was no one else like her. She helped him to understand the contradictions and power that women held, though she might not completely understand them herself.

  Their relationship, their love, was worth recovering. And once recovered, worth nurturing.

  Quinn quietly stripped to his Jockey shorts, and slowly, so as not to wake the imaginary Pearl, moved to the other side of the bed and slipped beneath the sheet.

  Am I going crazy? Do I love her this much? To construct her in my imagination when the logical me knows she isn’t here?

  The bedroom was hushed but for the constant muted sounds of the city. The distant rush of traffic, punctuated by sirens and sometimes faraway human voices, filtered in from the world on the other side of the window.

  There was a click, then a hum that built in volume and command. The window-unit air conditioner cycling on. Quinn felt cool air caress his leg beneath the sheet. He moved a bare foot outside the sheet, taking advantage of the breeze. He didn’t think the hum or sudden circulation of air would awaken Pearl. He remembered that usually she was a deep sleepe
r.

  Pearl, who wasn’t there.

  The phone rang at 2 A.M. Quinn fought his way awake and pressed the receiver to his ear. He hadn’t checked to see who was calling and was almost surprised to hear the real Pearl. But she was in the habit of sometimes calling him at odd hours.

  Does she lie in bed and think about me? Does she construct an imaginary Quinn?

  But that would mean—

  “What’d Renz want?” she asked.

  He swallowed the bitter taste along the edges of his tongue. “It’s past two o’clock, Pearl. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “I’m awake ’n so are you,” she said. “I don’t like it when I ask a question and the answer’s hours away.”

  Quinn yawned, almost displacing his jaw. “Since we’re both awake, you wanna meet someplace for coffee, maybe go dancing?”

  “Now you’re being a smart-ass.”

  “Yes, I am. I guess it’s just in me.”

  “Talk, Quinn.”

  He talked. Knowing he’d never have a more attentive listener. When he was finished, Pearl said, “I don’t like anything about it except for the money.”

  Quinn said, “I’m not thinking about the money.”

  “Yeah. Renz needs it, and you have a mission, so we’re stuck with it.”

  “We are. But it’s not such a bad thing, Pearl. Q and A doesn’t have anything else going at the moment. Because of the economy, maybe.”

  “We’re supposed to be a recession-proof business.”

  “Well, maybe we are. Maybe that’s why we’ve got poor Millie Graff.”

  “Then it is, Quinn.”

  “Is what?”

  “Such a bad thing.”

  “You’re exasperating, Pearl.”

  “I guess it’s just in me.”

  Quinn wondered if they would ever get to the point where their conversations didn’t turn into competitions.

  “We’re gonna need sleep, Pearl. Breakfast at the diner?”

  “Eight o’clock,” she said, and hung up.