'Time of death,' Nift said, 'was around seven P.M. evening before last, give or take a few hours.'
More or less what Renz had said.
'Why's the odor so strong?' Quinn asked.
'The air conditioner was turned off, probably by the killer.'
'Jesus!' To Pearl: 'Go out there and make sure the techs have examined it, then turn the damned thing back on.'
Pearl squeezed past him to leave the bathroom and made her way toward the living room.
'My guess is,' Nift said, 'the killer wanted this body to be found earlier rather than later. They can be home alone for more than a week sometimes before anyone notices, if the conditions are right and the place is tight. So he switched off the air conditioner so Maria would get ripe faster and attract attention.'
Quinn's guess was the same, but he merely nodded, then left the bathroom to join Pearl and Fedderman-if Feds was done talking to the uniforms and neighbors.
He wasn't, so they waited for him out in the hall where the odor wasn't so bad. Pearl peeled off her crime scene gloves and hoped Fedderman hadn't used all his menthol cream.
He hadn't, and when Fedderman arrived ten minutes later she dabbed some more beneath her nose.
The three of them walked another twenty feet down the narrow hall, toward some fire stairs, to be out of earshot of the uniform standing outside the apartment door.
'Neighbors saw and heard nothing,' Fedderman said. 'Mrs. Avarian, old woman who lives in the adjoining apartment, smelled something, though, and notified the super. He let himself in, saw the victim, then backed out and tried not to touch anything. He upchucked on the carpet, though, about six feet inside the door.'
'I noticed that,' Pearl said, 'and assumed it was one of the cops.'
'We'll tell Nift to check it,' Quinn said, 'just in case the victim or killer vomited.'
Pearl smiled. 'I'll tell him before we leave.'
'This victim's the same type as the others, but she followed the last one more closely, and there was no note beforehand to challenge and antagonize us.'
'He's changed his MO again,' Pearl said. 'Even changed his timing.'
'More likely this one was a target of opportunity,' Fedderman said.
Pearl looked at him, thinking he was a good cop despite being a sartorial disaster. He could be surprising.
'The killer knew we had his brother in custody,' Quinn said, 'and killed Maria Cirillo then switched off the air conditioner to make sure she'd be discovered soon. His way of letting us know Jeb wasn't the Butcher. He didn't have time to do much research on her. He might have simply latched onto her as she was walking along the sidewalk and followed her home, made sure she lived alone, then killed her.'
'Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time,' Pearl said.
'And having the wrong hair color,' Fedderman added.
'And looking so much like Mom,' Quinn said.
'I don't know,' Pearl said. 'Maria's such a good example of type, it could be that she was slated to be his next victim and he moved her time up.'
'Either way,' Quinn said, 'the message is the same-set my brother free.'
'Sounds almost noble,' Fedderman said.
'Not even close,' Pearl told him. She borrowed Fedderman's jar and rubbed more mentholated ointment beneath her nose. 'I'm going back in and talk to Nift.'
Quinn thought Nift would probably tell her to instruct the SCU team to bag a sample of the vomit on the floor, then who knew how Pearl would react? She was on tilt already, after their visit with the late Maria Cirillo.
He told Fedderman he'd be right back, and then went inside the apartment so he could be there to extinguish any sparks between Pearl and Nift.
Looking out for Pearl was an old habit hard to break.
55
'I often think of all that precious time lost between mother and son,' Myrna said to Quinn, 'and my own boy Sherman out there somewhere hunted and frightened.'
Myrna had more of a southern accent today. It wasn't so much on the edges, and it still dripped pure molasses. She'd been trying to hide it before, Pearl thought, trying to make herself seem as educated as her sons.
She was seated in a wooden chair at the small desk in her room at the Meredith, her body shifted sideways, one elbow on the desk. Her posture caused one of her shoulders to rise sexily so she looked like a femme fatale in an old movie. She was wearing a midnight blue silk robe that made her hair and eyes look darker. Her hair was brushed out so that it appeared longer, a hint of bangs on her broad, unlined forehead. The scent of soap hung in the air, as if she'd just shampooed and dried her hair.
Quinn had left Fedderman to do more legwork at the Cirillo murder scene and brought Pearl with him to the Meredith, thinking the woman's touch might come in handy in convincing Myrna Kraft to act as bait for her son Sherman. Not that they'd use the word bait.
'Did your dear son ever try to contact you during all those lost years?' Quinn asked. Dear. Pearl saw that Quinn was wearing his compassionate attitude, the one that evoked confidences and confessions, as if he were a priest with the power to heal. While it struck a phony note with Pearl, it might score with Myrna.
'Why, I'd have no way of knowing,' Myrna said. 'But, yes, something in my heart tells me he tried. Yes, he must have tried. Whatever awful things happened to Sherman during that time in the swamp, they must surely have put him in deep shock, as they would any normal nine-year-old boy. I read it was months before he even uttered a word.'
'I read that word was Mother,' Pearl said.
There was no change of expression in the hard, handsome planes of Myrna's face, but something primal moved behind those dark eyes.
'I never read or heard that,' she said, 'but it wouldn't surprise me that a lost boy's first words would be of the mother he loved.'
'It's because you love him that we came to you,' Quinn said. 'And because he must love you.'
Pearl tried not to look at him as he doled out his unctuous Irish charm. Why didn't these people see through such bullshit? But Pearl knew they seldom did.
Seldom, but sometimes. When Quinn encountered someone not so unlike himself.
'He must indeed,' Myrna said, 'and in a sense I suspect I failed him. All I can say is I did it for Jeb. I was forced to make a mother's terrible choice. I believed so fiercely that at least one of my sons must be saved, and I lived my new life according to that belief. Tell you true, in those days and beyond, there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for that boy. It was like he was both my sons become one.'
'Do you still feel that way about Jeb?'
'I'd have to swear I do.'
'And now God's given you a chance to help your other son,' Quinn said. He walked over and sat perched on the desk, so Myrna had to look up at him, into his sincere gaze. 'I shouldn't tell you this, and certainly I'm not referring to myself or Officer Kasner, but you're correct in your fear that some nervous trigger finger might twitch and take Sherman's life. The police are human, after all, and this killer has taunted them. Most of us act as professionals, but as in every profession, there are those who have their own agenda.'
'I do understand,' Myrna said. She hadn't blinked in the force of Quinn's charm attack.
Quinn persisted. 'Hard as it might be for you to believe, you and Jeb aren't the only ones who want to see Sherman taken into custody unharmed. He's a sick man-to you a boy still-and he desperately needs the proper treatment.'
Myrna gnawed on her lower lip for at least a minute. Then she sat back in her chair, stared down at her lap, then back up at Quinn. 'Explain exactly what you'd expect of me.'
'Of course. We want you simply to remain in your room here as if you were an ordinary guest at the hotel.
