'You one of us again, Pearl?' Quinn asked.
'The smart one,' she said.
They spent the next several hours talking to Ida's neighbors, some of whom remembered Pearl. No one had seen or heard anything unusual. Those who knew Ida Ingrahm said she was quiet, and worked as some kind of artist or graphic designer at a company in midtown. She rode the subway back and forth to work.
All the detective team's time and effort left them right back where they'd started hours ago, standing on the sidewalk just outside the building. Ida Ingrahm's remains had long since been removed, and the crime scene unit had pulled out. A uniform remained in the hall outside the apartment, with its door yellow-taped, and would be relieved in a few hours by another cop who would remain there all night. Sometimes criminals really did return to the scene of the crime. Especially if they forgot something incriminating.
Quinn unwrapped a Cuban cigar and lit it. The butcher shop stench had stayed with him and become taste. The acrid scent of burning tobacco helped. A few people walking past on the sidewalk glared at him as he exhaled a large puff of smoke. So arrest me. Neither Pearl nor Fedderman complained; they'd been upstairs like Quinn. It seemed to them that the entire building smelled like a slaughterhouse, but Ida's neighbors didn't seem to notice. Maybe the death stench had grown on them slowly, and they became accustomed to it.
Or maybe it was mental. The other tenants hadn't been in Ida's apartment to bid her farewell.
Ida nude. A three-dimensional Picasso. In pieces like a disconnected puzzle doll, chalk white and eerily pure in her drained bathtub.
Ida clean.
Her sins washed away?
Quinn knew better, but he wished for Ida that it worked that way. He felt an overbearing sadness not only for her but for himself and the entire human race.
The things we do to each other…
'You cab over here?' he asked Pearl.
Pearl nodded. Did a thing with her lips so she could take in some secondhand smoke.
'That's our unmarked across the street,' Quinn said.
'I know,' Pearl said. 'It's the only car that looks like it should be wearing a fedora.'
'Since you're on the case, come with us back to the office and we'll bring you up to speed.'
'We have an office?'
'Such as it is,' Fedderman said. 'And not far from here.'
'Has it got a coffee machine?'
'No.'
'Then it isn't an office.'
'Let's move,' Quinn said, already starting to cross the street.
'Vroom! Vroom!' Pearl said behind him.
Smart-mouthing me already, Quinn thought. Hiding behind her wisecracks where no one could touch her soft spots.
Well, who doesn't? At least sometimes?
A car pulled out of a parking space and had to brake hard to keep from hitting the three of them. The driver leaned on the horn. Pearl made an obscene gesture, otherwise ignoring the man.
Quinn thought this wasn't going to be easy.
So why, whenever he looked at Pearl, did he feel like smiling?
7
The office: three gray steel desks (as if Renz had known Pearl would be joining them); four chairs; a file cabinet; and a wooden table with a lamp, computer, and printer on it. The printer was the kind that copied and faxed and scanned and did who knew what-all that Quinn would probably never figure out. The table was directly over one of the outcroppings of wire on the floor, everything mysteriously connected to it via another tangle of wire emanating from computer and printer.
'This thing work?' Pearl asked, walking over to the computer. It was an old Hewlett-Packard, gigantic.
Quinn pulled a cord that opened some blinds, letting natural light in to soften the fluorescent glare. 'Yeah. And some computer whiz from the NYPD's gonna set us up with more of them. Update our system. We're coded into the NYPD and various data banks. Codes and passwords are on a piece of paper under the lamp base.'
Pearl grinned, the brightest thing in the gloomy office. 'Everybody hides their passwords under the lamp base. First place burglars and identity thieves look.'
'Nobody's gonna break in here,' Fedderman said. 'And far as I'm concerned, somebody else is welcome to my identity.'
Quinn settled into the chair behind his desk and rocked slightly back and forth. The chair squeaked. The other two chairs at the desks were identical-cheap black vinyl swivel chairs on rollers. The fourth chair was straight- backed and wooden, presumably for an eventual suspect.
Pearl and Fedderman rolled the other two chairs up close and sat down. Quinn's desk was strategically placed directly beneath one of the fluorescent fixtures, so there was plenty of light even if it was ghastly. He slid open one of the rattling steel drawers and handed Pearl the murder books on Janice Queen and Lois Ullman.
'You can look them over now, if you want,' he said, 'then take them home and study them.'
Pearl rested the files on her lap, and opened the top one. Quinn watched her scan each piece of paper or photograph inside, then move on and repeat the process. A tune from Phantom of the Opera was seeping over from the Nothing but the Tooth side of the building. Music to fill molars by? That, the hum and swish of traffic outside, and Pearl leafing through the files, were the only sounds for a long time.
Then Fedderman said, ''Music of the Night.''
Pearl, not looking up, said, 'Uh-huh.'
Along with a ballpoint pen and the glass ashtray with BILTMORE HOTEL on it, was a telephone on Quinn's desk. It wasn't a rotary, but it was old and black with a base and receiver.
And it was ringing.
Quinn lifted the receiver and pressed it to his ear.
The caller was Nift, with a more detailed autopsy report.
'Death by drowning,' he said. 'Probably carved up by the same cutting instruments used on the previous victims. Looks like a power saw was used on the larger bones and tougher ligaments. Tightly serrated blade, like an electric jigsaw or maybe a circular. Her family should be glad she was dead at the time.'
'A portable saw?'
'Could've been a portable. It'd almost have to be, wouldn't it, not to make too much noise? And they make them powerful these days.'
'That's how we figure it,' Quinn said.
'No signs of sexual activity of any kind around the genitals or on any of the body parts. No traces of semen anywhere at the scene. A residue of adhesive on ankles and arms, and around the mouth, from when the victim was taped in such a way that she wouldn't have been able to move anything but fingers and toes. In short, Ida Ingrahm died just like the first two victims. And she was a brunette, like the first two. If there was any doubt before that you're on the trail of a serial killer, there shouldn't be now. The beautiful if disassembled Ida was number three.'
'You think it coulda been a doctor or a butcher? The way the work was done and he cleaned up after himself?'
'Coulda been almost anyone,' Nift said. 'It only took rudimentary knowledge, maybe gained from animals. Coulda been a fastidious janitor.'
Quinn didn't say anything for a few seconds.
'Anything else I can help you with while I'm on the phone?' Nift asked.
'You called me,' Quinn said. 'Most of the time medical examiners wait for the detectives to call.'
