Quinn dropped his fork on his plate. “Jesus! You saying the snake killed her?”

“Looks that way, but unless the snake smoked cigarettes, somebody else participated. There were cigarette burns on her body, applied in an effective, familiar manner. Touched to her closed eyelids and the corners of her lips, behind her ears.”

“So it seems to be the same killer that did in Linda Bracken,” Quinn said, “minus the snake, in Linda’s case.”

“Looks like Honey was tortured by the killer and left for dead in the swamp, then along came the snake,” Renz said.” The ME says it was the snake that did her in. Crushed her to death. I guess you could say the snake was an accomplice. It’s not talking, though. The guy who found her shot it.”

Quinn found himself thinking it was too bad somebody hadn’t come along and shot Honey Carter before she had to die in the tightening grip of a twenty-five-foot snake.

“Linda Bracken, Honey Carter . . .” Renz said. “Put it all together it means Dead on Arrival. Seems we got ourselves a traveler serial killer.”

“And one who’s in town,” Quinn said. “And maybe claimed more victims than the four we know about. He’s been here awhile and may have hidden some of them where they haven’t been found.”

“Is that likely?”

“According to Helen, not likely, but possible. Like an artist who doesn’t want to lose his touch. They’d simply be listed as missing persons.”

“Maybe he’ll keep traveling north, toward Toronto. That’d put the crazy bastard in another country so we wouldn’t have to screw around with him.”

“Predators go where there’s the most prey,” Quinn said. “He’s ours.” He sipped his coffee, but it didn’t taste very good. “Media wolves know this cigarette torture thing?”

“Minnie Miner probably does. She finds out everything even before it happens. She’ll be trying to get hold of you for an interview.”

“I’ll refer her to you.”

“Seems like somebody’s already referred her to you.”

“I wonder who.”

“Enjoy your eggs Benedict.”

Quinn broke the connection and shoved his plate away.

Hugged to death by a snake.

God Almighty!

56

New York, the present

Fedderman hadn’t slept much last night, but this morning, over breakfast, he and Penny had talked like adults. At least that was how she’d described it. That shaky gyroscopic balance that unkillable marriages somehow achieved had been regained.

All in all, it was a reason for Fedderman to feel pretty good.

The morning’s conversation had even prompted him to dress neatly before leaving the apartment, knowing Penny would notice. He was wearing yesterday’s baggy dark pants, but a clean white shirt, and the jacket of the Armani suit she’d advised him to buy. He had his usual mismatched look about him, but still, who could complain? It was his style.

He was on his way to interview a neighbor of the late Honor Tripp.

There was no sign that the building had recently housed a crime scene. The tape was gone from downstairs, as well as the cop on duty. Honor Tripp’s apartment was still sealed, but that seemed to be the only visible irregularity in the hall.

Fedderman knocked on the door of the apartment adjacent to the one where Honor Tripp had died and waited for her neighbor, Justin Beck, to answer.

Beck responded to Fedderman’s knock almost immediately. As if he’d been waiting at the window and seen Fedderman approach the building.

Beck was average height and weight, about forty, and handsome if you were a woman who liked squared-up guys with buzz cuts who appeared to have just been mustered out of the military. He was spiffed up in a gray business suit and looked ready to leave for some gray business. He made a nice contrast to Fedderman. However, as he stepped back to let Fedderman in, he did a double take on the Armani jacket. Fedderman smiled inwardly.

Beck’s apartment was identical to that of Tripp’s. Small entry hall, midsized living room, short hall to bathroom and bedroom. Gallery kitchen off to one side, bathroom to the other. It was a prewar building, as someone selling New York real estate would have been quick to point out. Meaning you couldn’t hear through the walls.

Which, to Fedderman, cast a faint shadow of doubt on Beck’s account of why he’d called 911.

Beck seemed loose and amiable enough, despite the fact that he looked like part of a toy soldier set. Fedderman declined an offer of coffee—it would have been his fourth of the morning—and sat down on a sofa that creaked like vinyl rather than leather and was cold even through the seat of Fedderman’s out-of-season wooly pants.

While Beck was in the kitchen getting coffee for himself, Fedderman looked around. The wood floor was highly polished. There was a square rug in the center of the room. Furniture that looked like luxury Ikea was placed as if by the giant hand of a decorator.

Beck returned with coffee in a plain white mug and sat down in an angular wood-armed chair across from Fedderman.

“Sure you don’t want a cup?” he asked with a smile. Precise white teeth. “It’s exquisite and comes from a country in South America nobody has heard of.”

“It all tastes pretty much the same to me,” Fedderman said.

Beck nodded. “You’ve got a point.”

“You off work today?”

“I took a day off,” Beck said. “I guess I’m still shook up about the murder. Right next door. I about had a cow.”

“You told the uniformed officer who talked to you that you were an engineer of some sort.”

“Yeah. Structural engineer. I subcontract out to various developments.”

Fedderman didn’t know quite what that meant but let it pass. The scent of the coffee was stronger and started to make Fedderman hungry.

“I’m sure you get tired of going over your account of Honor Tripp’s murder,” he said, “but—”

“Not at all,” Beck interrupted. “Sharing the experience kind of eases my mind.”

This presented a problem for Fedderman. He had a copy of Beck’s statement and sure didn’t want to sit through hearing it read out loud.

“Read this,” he said, taking the three folded sheets of paper out of one of the Armani jacket’s inside pockets. “I want to make sure it’s accurate, then we can talk about it.”

Beck plunked wire-framed reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and read studiously, as if seeing the material for the first time. Fedderman watched his concentration, how Beck’s pupils danced line to line over the three sheets of paper.

Finally Beck placed his coffee mug on the floor, on a Home Progress magazine where it wouldn’t leave a ring. He took two steps up out of the chair and leaned halfway across the living room, passing the rolled-up statement toward Fedderman as if it were the baton in a relay race. Fedderman leaned forward, accepted it, and fell back into the sofa.

“Summarize,” he said.

“I’d fallen asleep about ten o’clock,” Beck said, “reading a book about how the Panama Canal was built.”

Was this guy serious? “Is that anyplace near where your coffee came from?” Fedderman asked.

“Probably,” Beck said with a straight face, and that was when Fedderman knew Beck was messing with him. Making sport of him.

That made Fedderman mad, but he wasn’t going to let Beck see that side of him. He’d play right along. It interested Fedderman that a murder next door and a statement to the police, and now a police interview, didn’t seem to cow Beck. It seemed instead to give him a welcome chance to play games. Overconfident killers—which most of them were—thought that way. They were the smartest guy in the room, even if it was full of Nobel Prize members.

Fedderman got his black leather notepad out of his pocket. Dug deeper and found a chewed-up pencil. He settled back and pretended to take notes.