Quinn looked at her. Philosophizing at crime scenes wasn't like Pearl. The Milton Kahn effect, maybe.
'It makes my hypothesis more likely,' she said. 'About a compulsive, psychosexual serial killer not being what we've been chasing. That could all be a diversion.'
'Profiler says no,' Fedderman said.
'He's got her fooled,' Pearl said.
'More likely a copycat,' Fedderman said.
Quinn shot a glance at the ghastly green torso. At the two neatly placed small-caliber bullet holes in the chest, among hairs that were just beginning to gray. The victim might have been around fifty, but it would take the medical examiner to know for sure. Almost certainly the bullets were still in him. 'We'll know about the copycat theory as soon as we get postmortem and the ballistics test results on the bullets.'
Motion caught his eye and he looked toward the front of the building, where more cars were arriving. Not all of them were NYPD. The media had caught the scent and were on the scene. Quinn knew more were on the way.
'Wolves,' Pearl said.
'Useful ones sometimes, though,' Quinn said.
'That'll be a tough sell with me.'
'I'm going back to the office,' Quinn said. His Lincoln was parked out front, half a block down so it might not attract media attention. There were more black Lincoln Town Cars in New York than any vehicle other than cabs, but the media knew his car's license number, so he had to be careful. 'You and Feds talk to the people in the restaurant, especially the guy who found the body, then drive the unmarked back to the office. Meanwhile, I'll be in touch with Renz and find out as soon as possible what comes out of the morgue and lab.'
As Quinn was walking toward the street, he saw Nift approaching confidently from the opposite direction. He was wearing a well-cut black suit and lugging his black medical case, bouncing jauntily, as he always did, with each step.
He smiled when he saw Quinn. 'Leaving so soon?'
'Miles to go before I sleep,' Quinn said.
'Poetry, no less. And I thought you were the victim, you being so green and all.'
'He's back there waiting for you,' Quinn said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the torso.
Nift raised his eyebrows in surprise. 'He?'
'I know it's a disappointment for you, but this time the victim's a man.'
'The Torso Killer offed a man? What's that mean?'
'Means he's dead,' Quinn said and walked on.
As soon as he turned the building's corner and started for his car, he heard shoe leather scuffing on concrete, a voice: 'Captain Quinn, can we have a statement?'
'Sorry,' Quinn said, 'but no comment.'
'But you will say we can assume this is another Torso Murder?' another voice, a woman's, asked.
'Assume away.'
More shoe leather noise, even though Quinn was walking faster. He sensed numbers behind him, but he didn't want to turn around and count. It sounded as if they were about to close in on him. He could imagine the headline: MOBBED BY THE MEDIA. The Lincoln was still a hundred feet away.
'Anything different about this one?' the same woman asked.
Quinn put on some speed. 'You might ask the M.E., Dr. Nift. He's back there now with him.'
Several voices in unison: 'Him?'
At first Quinn thought they were talking about Nift. Then he realized otherwise.
Shit! Quinn regretted his slip immediately. Not that it mattered; they'd learn it soon enough. Still, he didn't like goofing up that way. A victim of another sex was just the sort of information the police should have kept away from the press. Something cops could know and all those nutcases making false confessions wouldn't imagine.
Too late now.
'Is this victim a man?' several voices asked, almost in unison.
'Captain Quinn?' The woman's voice. Grating and insistent. 'Is this victim-'
'I think that's what Dr. Nift said,' Quinn told them, as he finally reached the car and pressed the fob to unlock the doors. 'Dr. Nift knows more than anybody about this one.' He got the door open and managed to ease his way inside the car as the media wolves crowded around him. 'He's the little guy poking around the body who looks like Napoleon dressed like a banker.'
Quinn removed some fingers wrapped around the edge of the door and got it closed, then hit the universal lock button, started the car, and got out of there.
In the rearview mirror he saw at least half a dozen shadowy figures hurrying back toward where the ghastly green torso lay, toward Nift and his black bag of tricks.
Quinn, sitting at his desk in the office, looked up when the door opened and Pearl and Fedderman came in. They looked tired. They should-it was almost midnight. It must have been a late night for some of the pizza people, too.
Pearl went over and slumped in her desk chair. Fedderman trudged to a brass hook on the wall and hung up his wrinkled suit coat, then rolled his chair out toward the middle of the room and sat down wearily.
'Anything?' Quinn asked, knowing the answer.
'Nothing,' Pearl said. 'Nobody saw, heard, or smelled a thing other than pizza. The guy who discovered the torso, kid named Enrico, was still shook up, but his story's simple enough. The head cook sent him out with the garbage to add to the pile of sealed plastic bags, and there was the victim. Kid thought it was a fake at first, some kind of prop. Then it dawned on him what he was looking at and he went back into the kitchen shaking and told the head cook. The head cook came out and verified his story, then went back into the kitchen and called the police.'
'We talked to people in the neighboring buildings, too,' Fedderman said. 'Same no story there.'
'Our guy's nothing if not careful,' Quinn said.
'According to the pizza employees,' Pearl said, 'no one had gone out the restaurant's back door since about eleven this morning. The torso could have been there quite a while. It was half buried in all the trash, so the eleven o'clock employee might not have noticed it. Busy as the street is, our guess is that it was put there the night before, when hardly anybody was around. It's a block of businesses, so it's a good place to ditch a body after dark.'
'Like the other places where we've found the torsos,' Quinn said.
'Our guy,' Pearl said.
Fedderman ignored her. It was clear they'd reached the point where they were getting on each other's nerves. Quinn understood.
'What's next, boss?' Fedderman asked. 'More coffee, or bed?'
'Information, then bed,' Quinn said. 'Ballistics did a rush job, and the bullets in and near the heart were twenty-twos, fired by the same gun that killed the other victims.'
'There goes the copycat theory,' Pearl said.
Fedderman made an obviously Herculean effort not to reply to her taunt.
'We'll know more about the postmortem tomorrow,' Quinn said. 'Something different about the broomstick stake, though. The others were cedar; this one's made of poplar. And the cuts that sharpened it are more visible and were made by shorter, shallower strokes, and from a sharper blade. And it wasn't sanded as fine. Also, no traces of furniture oil.'
'Ouch!' Fedderman said.
'Believe it,' Quinn told him. 'Nift did confirm the broomstick was inserted via the rectum when the victim was alive.'
'After he was shot, though?' Fedderman asked.
'Nift couldn't be sure. The bullets might not have killed him right away. Nift said he might have lived another few minutes.'
'Hard minutes,' Fedderman said.
'All that blood,' Pearl said. 'Any prints on the broomstick?'
'Of course not,' Quinn said. 'And what you were looking at wasn't all blood.'
