Night Kills Read online

  He couldn’t think of a good reason.

  Ten minutes passed. Now getting up or not wasn’t the question. He had to take a leak.

  With City Beat still on the periphery of his thoughts, he struggled to a sitting position on the squeaking bed, turned on the lamp, and plodded into the bathroom.

  Might as well stay up now. He put on his wrinkled uniform pants from yesterday, knowing a freshly pressed uniform just back from the dry cleaners hung in the closet. He’d change into the clean uniform later, after he’d showered and shaved. He slipped bare feet into his shoes and left on the gray T-shirt he’d slept in. He went back into the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, and used wet fingers to slick back red hair that hadn’t a trace of gray in it.

  Awake all the way now, he went into the kitchen and set up his Mr. Coffee to brew. Then he took a look out the window to make sure it wasn’t raining and left the apartment to walk to the end of the block and get a Times and City Beat from their respective vending machines.

  By the time he got back it was starting to get light out and traffic was just beginning to pick up. The apartment smelled of freshly brewed coffee, and he felt hungry and wished he’d found someplace open and bought some doughnuts. Not that he needed the calories.

  He poured a cup of coffee, added a dash of cream from the refrigerator, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Nobbler glanced at the Times first. There was rioting in France, Congress was calling for an investigation into something Nobbler didn’t understand, and beneath the paper’s fold there was great consternation over the Yankees’s seven-game losing streak.

  The usual, Nobbler thought. All the money the Yankees had, you’d think they could buy some pitchers who didn’t have arms ready to fall off. He put the Times aside, took a sip of coffee, and looked at City Beat.

  Holy Christ!

  Nobbler forgot all about his appetite, the Yankees, and his coffee as he read.

  He’d known about the first female torso being found, and the second dead woman. He hadn’t known that, like the first victim, only the torso of the second victim was at the morgue. And he hadn’t yet seen the results of the ballistics tests. Commissioner Renz had certainly thrown a blanket of secrecy over the second woman, so it wouldn’t be obvious right away that a serial killer was at work. And the thing with the pointed stake or whatever it was—Nobbler hadn’t known about that, only that the first woman had been sexually penetrated. He had to admit he admired the way Renz had been able to maintain even partial secrecy over matters like this. Renz wasn’t shy about working the levers of power.

  Well, neither was Nobbler. And Renz had done something that really pissed him off. Frank Quinn was back on the scene, and on the Torso Murders case, along with his two detectives Kasner and Fedderman. Nobbler wasn’t crazy about the three of them, and in his mind they were no longer NYPD. Especially Quinn, who shouldn’t be able to get anywhere near the department. They gave him a ton of money and cut him loose, so what the hell else did he want? Nobbler didn’t so much resent Quinn because he was bent, more because he was bent in the wrong direction. He turned his thoughts to Kasner and Fedderman, but only briefly. Couple of losers.

  What power did Renz have, to call these three retreads in as his private detective squad to solve a case that would benefit him politically?

  But Nobbler knew what power—that of position and popularity. No one in or out of city government wanted to cross Renz, and strictly speaking, it wasn’t illegal for the NYPD to hire outside contractors or temporarily reactivate former cops. Especially if they were acting under the auspices of the commissioner.

  Right now Renz was on a roll and wanted to stay that way. Ambitious bastard. Not that Nobbler could hold that against him.

  Disgusted, he tossed the paper on top of the Times and sat back and sipped at his coffee, which was now almost too cool to drink. The information in the City Beat article was probably all over TV and radio news, and late-edition papers would pick it up. Nobbler knew how it would go, now that the media had a hand to play, and he knew how he’d deal with them if he were in charge.

  But he wasn’t in charge. He didn’t like having what he considered his turf trespassed upon. And that was exactly what was happening. He was sure as hell going to do something about it.

  For a long time he sat sipping cool coffee and thought about just what it was that he could or would do. There were possibilities, always possibilities. And future opportunities to be seized.

  Whatever it took, he’d figure out something so that Renz and company would find themselves in a quagmire.

  No, not a quagmire. Quicksand.

  “It seems to have hit the fan,” Fedderman said, as he claimed the chair he’d sat in last night in Quinn’s den. The room was brighter today, with yellow sunlight spilling in between the opened drapes. There were a lot of dust motes swirling softly in the sunlight. Just looking at them made Pearl feel as if she had to sneeze. She figured Quinn didn’t clean very often.

  Pearl sat in the armchair again but didn’t draw up and cross her legs this time. Her sensible black shoes were planted firmly on the floor, her hands resting lightly on her thighs. She was dressed in dark slacks, a white blouse, and a gray blazer with black buttons. She looked like a cop.

  Like Fedderman, she was carrying this morning’s edition of City Beat. “It’ll be all over the TV news, too,” she said. “Some of those talking heads read things other than their prompters.” She twisted her newspaper into a roll and wielded it as if she wanted to hit someone.

  She was right. Quinn had checked New York One TV before going out and walking to the Lotus Diner for an early breakfast. They were already broadcasting from the places where the two torsos had been found. Then, when he’d returned to his apartment, he’d looked in on CNN and Fox News. The story had already gone national. He wasn’t surprised that news of the murders had hit so soon and with such impact. It was a sensational story, like one of those TV cop shows, only real. That was why political-and media-savvy Renz had been so desperate to hire them.

  “Had time to go over the murder books?” Quinn asked, settling down behind his desk. The unlit Cuban cigar was still in the ashtray. He was smoking less and less these days, like other New Yorkers, being systematically backed into a physical and psychological corner by the mayor and his minions. Quinn reminded himself that the mayor had his health and well-being in mind. It kept him from disliking the mayor.

  “Last night and this morning,” Fedderman said.

  Pearl simply nodded. Quinn thought she looked beautiful in the bright morning light that would expose other women’s flaws.

  She noticed the way he was looking at her and stared at him until he averted his gaze.

  “Nothing jumped out at me that’d crack the case and make me a hero,” Fedderman said. “I’m sure the police profiler will have plenty to say about the victims being dismembered. And that impaling business. Phallic symbolism. They’re always quick to find that.”

  “There’s a lot of it going around,” Pearl said. “Maybe our guy is impotent.”

  Fedderman shrugged. “Just because some guy shoves something other ’an his dong up some broad doesn’t mean he can’t get it up.”

  “How would you know that, Feds?”

  “I’m a detective, Pearl.”

  Quinn was looking at Pearl. “Something bothering you?”

  “A niggling doubt.” she said. “These two murders were obviously committed by the same psycho, but still there were only two of them. It’s possible both women did something that set this guy off, maybe even together, and he doesn’t have a grudge against other women, or some kind of fixation and compulsion to kill more. Maybe the two victims and the killer shared some kind of past that led to violence. I mean, do two victims make a serial killer?”

  Fedderman said, “It’s a good question.”

  “The media seem to think two’s enough,” Quinn said.

  Pearl said, “It’s still a good question.”


  Quinn leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “We all know how we’ll find out the answer.”

  The truth of what he’d said sobered all of them.

  Pearl sniffed the air. “You been smoking in here?”

  “It’s a good question,” Quinn said.

  7

  Jill Clark sat in front of her computer staring at her screen saver of great Impressionist paintings gliding past. There went a Renoir, delicate and graceful in composition and color, so unlike the struggle and ugliness just outside her window.

  She watched the painting disappear at the edge of the monitor screen.

  She’d been sitting for a long time staring at the screen and had come to the conclusion that it was time to take stock.

  The paintings were beautiful, but her own life seemed to be getting uglier and more of a struggle by the day. This was a hard city. Hard and merciless. If it were possible for a city to have a killer instinct, this one did.

  Jill was twenty-nine years old with shoulder-length blond hair that often had a way of being enchantingly mussed. Her features were symmetrical, with perhaps too much chin. She had full lips, strong cheekbones, and an undeniably good figure, from jogging almost daily in her neighborhood or in the park. Her eyes were blue and she had a scattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Men seemed to find that an attractive combination.

  She had a degree in accounting and a background in sales: office furniture, then insurance policies for antique and collectable cars.

  Along with a nice smile, those were her assets.

  Then there were her liabilities, mostly credit card debts. Revolving accounts to which she paid only interest while the balances ballooned. From time to time, Files and More, the temporary employment agency that found her part-time work, would land her a decent-paying job, but this was temporary employment. Jill would earn enough to make some headway with the charge accounts, but then there would be periods of inactivity and she’d fall further behind than ever. This seemed to be a cycle she couldn’t break.

  Jill had, in fact, come to think of herself as a professional temp. That was how she might fill in job applications and various other forms under “occupation.” Temp. It at least kept prospective employers from thinking she might have just gotten out of prison. Now and then temporary jobs obtained through Files and More resulted in permanent employment—that’s what the company had told her—but Jill soon learned it didn’t happen very often. And she’d become convinced it wasn’t going to happen for her.

  Not only was the work temporary, but no matter where you were assigned the other employees treated you differently. You would never be one of them. They knew you’d simply fail to come in someday and that would be the last they’d see of you. They wouldn’t exactly be rude to temporary workers, but no one wanted to form anything like a fast or permanent friendship. And romance seemed to be out of the question. Sex was always possible with the geeks she ran into who saw her as temporary in more ways than one, but romance, connecting with someone she might eventually love and depend on, that was as distant as the farthest star. Romance was, of course, what Jill wanted desperately. That and an infusion of cash.

  A Monet smoothly crossed the screen. A garden scene: water lilies; muted, beautiful colors; lush green at the edges but subdued, like the green of a faded dollar bill.

  Romantic, but the painting had made her think of money.

  If she didn’t find steady employment soon, Jill would have real money problems. She had no family, hadn’t since her brother in Missouri died last year, and she was only four months in New York.

  It had seemed the longest four months of her life. There was no one she could turn to for a personal loan, or even a reassuring hug. What people said about New York was so true: It took a lot of money to exist here. And if you were by yourself in the city, the loneliness could crush you.

  Jill was determined not to be crushed, not to return to Wichita, Kansas. That way lay defeat as well as more loneliness.

  On one of her jobs, helping to label and box catalogs, a woman named Billie had told her about Internet dating, how she’d started to do it and it had turned out well for her. Sure, she’d met a lot of losers, but a few winners. Nothing permanent, but guys who wanted more than drinks, laughs, and a quick go-round and see you later.

  At the time, Jill had been almost horrified by the idea. Having to resort to the Internet for romance seemed so wrong, and it was embarrassing. High tech meets the heart. She sure as hell didn’t need that.

  But now…well, it was different. Maybe because Jill hadn’t had a meaningful date in months. The last guy had taken her to a Village dive and expected oral sex right there under the table. And he’d seemed so…normal at first. Maybe that was the trouble. Maybe she’d lost touch and he was normal and she was living outside the real world.

  No, she refused to believe that.

  There went a Manet, an ordered but vivid scene of revelers, a beautiful woman wearing a low-cut dress and a large locket standing behind a bar and looking out and smiling at whoever over time might observe the painting. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, no doubt a raunchy place in nineteenth-century Paris. Now it would seem tame. Its festive image had lost its lasciviousness and become art, and great art at that.

  Jill had done some research, and it altered her opinion about Internet dating. Billie was probably right. It was a new world and things had changed. Jill would simply have to adapt. In this hectic life, in this mad city, there was nothing wrong, or particularly unusual, about using an Internet matchmaking service. Romance—possible romance, anyway—might be had at a price. Plenty of people were paying that price and finding romance. Why not Jill?

  A Degas glided past, one of his poised and elegant ballerinas glowing in the limelight of the past.

  Jill owed on her plastic cards, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t maxed out. Plastic and elastic. Hope. The thing that sprang eternal.

  One roll of the dice, and it could be a beautiful world.

  She decided to take a chance.

  There went a Van Gogh.

  Quinn and his team members had exchanged ideas and information and decided they needed to start at the beginning and cover ground already trod. They’d visit the places where the torsos were found and question people in surrounding buildings, try to find someone who’d heard something unusual or happened to look out a window and see something that might be pertinent. Even if they’d given previous statements, the same questions after the passage of time could sometimes trigger memories.

  They were about to get up and leave Quinn’s office when they got a call from Renz saying he’d just finished taping a television interview that was about to air on a local channel.

  Quinn aimed a remote at the small TV in the bookcase across from his desk and ran up the channels. Pearl got up from the armchair and closed the drapes to block the sunlight. Her motions were almost automatic, as if she still lived there and adjusted the drapes often.

  By the time Quinn found the interview it was well under way. Michelle DeRavenelle, an impossibly cute local news anchor, was standing alongside Renz, holding a microphone. The interview was taking place in a sunny spot outside One Police Plaza. A slight summer breeze ruffled DeRavenelle’s hair and made her look even cuter, while making Renz’s sparse locks stand straight up so he looked as if he’d just gotten up from reading in bed.

  “…only the nude torsos?” DeRavenelle was finishing asking. She held the microphone out toward Renz as if offering him a bite.

  There was a small, lonely potted tree just behind and to the left of Renz. He shifted slightly to his left and a branch seemed to be growing out of his head. “Serial killers operate out of compulsion,” he said. “They feel they have no choice. While leaving the victims’ torsos to be found seems—and in fact is—bizarre to us, it might not seem so to him.”

  DeRavenelle appeared to dismiss this answer. “Hopefully, the FBI or police profilers have analyzed this kil
ler, Commissioner.”

  “Of course.”

  Quinn smiled. He didn’t recall any profiler report in the files. What could anyone really surmise with any degree of certainty about a killer from a couple of unidentifiable torsos? That was the sort of thing that happened only in mystery novels and television drama.

  “Do the police have any ideas as to who he is, what kind of madman he is? If indeed he is mad.”

  “Oh, he’s mad by our standards,” Renz said, “however anyone might decide to label him. Early on in a case, that’s about the only thing we can be sure of when dealing with this kind of killer. Our profiler is examining evidence and working out a hypothetical composite suspect who I’m sure will eventually turn out to be much like the real suspect when we arrest him. Sadly, at this point there simply isn’t much to work with, so it will take time.”

  “Can the same be said about Captain Frank Quinn and his detectives—that it will take time for them to assemble enough information to find the killer? Unfortunately, there might not be time to waste.”

  Renz wasn’t thrown. “It’s difficult to predict how this kind of investigation will go, but I’m sure that with Quinn in charge it will take the minimum amount of time to make an arrest. That’s why I partnered with him and his team and tasked them to find the killer. I know they’re the best, and in a case like this, one that impacts virtually all of our citizens who are women—or men who have lovers, wives, or daughters—the city deserves the best.”

  DeRavenelle cocked her head and smiled. This guy knew how to play the game. “But no suspects so far, Commissioner?”

  “Not solid suspects. Because of the deviant sexual aspect to these terrible crimes—”

  “You mean the sharpened stake?”

  “Yes, the sharpened stake.” It bore repeating.

  “Does penetration of the victim occur before or after death, sir?” DeRavenelle grimaced, somehow prettily, and gazed out at her viewers. “Hopefully, after.”