54

New York, earlier that morning

The killer sat at an outdoor table of a restaurant almost a block away from the building where Honor Tripp had lived and died. His bare forearm was in bright sunlight and resting on the warm metal table. The rest of him was in the deep shade of a large green umbrella sprouting from the table’s center.

What was going on down the street, and the cold beer the waiter had just brought, made for good entertainment. All the more so because he was the cause of it. The script was written and was being followed. And it was his script.

The black leather man purse he’d carried rested on the pavement beneath the table. Its contents would have been of extreme interest to the police presence down the street.

He sipped his beer and watched the police milling about in practiced consultation, trying to fit together whatever small and confounding pieces of the crime they possessed. Or thought they possessed. There were emergency vehicles, radio cars from several precincts, plainclothes detectives moving about and deferred to like royalty. Flashing lights of various hues defied the brightening morning and faintly painted the surroundings. A TV van with large station letters on its sides and a satellite antenna came on the scene. A TV crew spilled out of it and worked to set up for one of the local stations. Everything seemed to center around a newscaster wearing a tight skirt and low-cut blouse. The wind mussed her hair, and an assistant ran forward and rearranged it, then shot it with aerosol spray to keep it in place.

Ah, the aftermath of murder. If there could be such a thing as a delicious sight, this would be it.

There was the body, not so long ago a beautiful woman within his hands, now being wheeled to a waiting ambulance with its doors standing open. The paramedics were moving with precision but not with any sense of urgency. “Action! Action!” he felt like shouting, as if he were a silent movie director spurring on his cast. Few arranged dramas could be more invigorating. More deeply arousing. This must be what it felt like to be an arsonist observing a fire he’d started. Or to be God.

Action! Let’s have her die trying to claw her way out of the ambulance! One last burst of life.

But he knew that had been impossible for hours. His plan had taken it into consideration.

He saw the rotund cop in the tailored blue suit leave, driven away in an unmarked black Ford with a uniformed cop at the wheel. So the higher-ups in the NYPD were visiting the crime scene—a measure of the impact the murders were having on the city.

The killer gave silent thanks to the media. He really should call in to Minnie Miner ASAP and thank the woman who cracked the whip at that circus.

Another car, unmarked but obviously a police vehicle, even down to a stubby aerial on its trunk, remained where Quinn and the other plainclothes cop, Pearl Kasner, had left it, angled in at the curb. Next to it was another anonymous black Ford, this one badly dented. Two uniformed cops, belonging to a patrol car parked nearby, were stationed at the apartment entrance.

A little barrel-chested guy in a dark suit got out of the dented black Ford. He was toting a large black bag. Obviously, he was the ME. Running a little late, the killer thought.

Perhaps a letter of complaint would set him right for the next murder.

A dusty van that the CSU working drones had arrived in was almost squared away with the building’s glassy entrance. A woman in a white outfit, including white gloves, got something from the van, then hurried back inside the building. In front of the van was a second ambulance, this one with its back doors closed, waiting but not in any rush to leave. If there was another victim inside the building, probably he or she wouldn’t require haste.

This was a lot of excitement for the quiet East Village neighborhood. On the sidewalk opposite the apartment, knots of people stood about watching. Other people at the round metal outdoor restaurant tables were obviously distracted by whatever was going on down the street, but weren’t so interested that they were going to stop eating or drinking and walk to get a closer look. This was New York. Like the bumper stickers said, Shit Happens.

The killer sat and watched it all unfold, like fate that he’d decreed. Honor Tripp hadn’t made a grand exit, being in a body bag. That was a little disappointing, what with her face being covered.

With the star of the show gone, things began to wind down. The crowd of onlookers had lost its center and was beginning to thin. One by one, the police and emergency vehicles departed.

Soon only Quinn and Pearl’s car remained.

There was little going on inside the apartment now other than predictable routine. Neighbors would be interviewed. Statements would be taken. Honor Tripp’s apartment, already minutely examined by the Crime Scene Unit, might be given another cursory examination.

Toiling and toiling over a crime scene—that was a large part of police work. Until, gradually, they’d find something interesting. Though not necessarily immediately helpful.

The killer had been careful about what he’d touched before donning his latex gloves. He was certain he hadn’t left fingerprints, or any bodily fluids. He’d even worn a condom, just in case. Sorry, NYPD, no DNA.

The apartment building down the street seemed almost back to normal. A sloppily parked car remained at the curb. Another, a patrol car, was parked half a block down. Some yellow-orange Crime Scene ribbon surrounded the scene.

Things were pretty quiet on the outside of the area the tape encompassed. And they were quiet on the inside. Everyone had left, other than a stoical uniformed cop standing watch, and detectives Quinn and Pearl.

Everything was as it should be. As the killer had planned and wrought.

Not the first time, it occurred to him that what he was doing was almost biblical. “Playing God,” as Minnie Miner had described it on her nightly newscast.

Tilting back his head, he finished his beer. God allowed him a belch.

He left, satisfied.

55

New York, three years ago

While he was eating breakfast, Quinn’s cell phone beeped. He glanced at it and saw by the number that the caller was Renz. Quinn didn’t want to talk to him just now, but he knew he’d better, or the busy and ambitious Renz might make himself difficult to contact. Though Renz had the capacity to ruin a good breakfast, even over the phone, Quinn pressed the proper button and said good morning.

“You won’t think so after talking with me,” Renz said.

“Big surprise.”

“What was that?”

“How are you going to ruin my appetite, Harley?”

“If I’d known you were at breakfast, I wouldn’t have called.”

“Go ahead, Harley, ruin my eggs Benedict.”

“In 1993 a murdered woman name of Linda Bracken was found tortured and murdered in a Sarasota, Florida, hotel. There was some carving on her forehead that might have been the letters D and O, then something indecipherable. She’d also been tortured with a knife and a lighted cigarette. In December 1995, outside a flyspeck town called Prentis, also in Florida but north of Sarasota, a woman named Honey Carter was found killed by a giant python—”

Quinn lowered his fork full of eggs Benedict. “A what?”

“Python, as in snake. People down in Florida keep them as pets, then turn them loose in the swamp when they get too big to feed or handle. Damned things grow to over twenty-five feet. They can even kill and eat an eight-foot gator. So they thrive there, and one of them somehow got wrapped around this Honey Carter. Squeezed her to death. Had a start on trying to swallow her. Those things can displace their jaws and expand, swallow whole animals.”