'All the better. That way they won't be able to nail anything down. If it's somebody we can't find, they won't be able to find him either and eliminate him as a suspect. It might also lull the real Torso killer into thinking we've gone off on a tangent.'
Renz stopped unconsciously cracking his knuckles. 'You've obviously given this some thought.'
'Uh-huh.'
Quinn watched Renz's expression, the Swiss-watch mechanism behind the sad eyes. Renz was figuring the odds and risks and rewards of what Quinn was suggesting, and what it might mean to his career, his relentless climb up the slippery ladder. It took him only seconds to grasp it all. He was shrewd as well as ambitious. It struck Quinn, as it had many times, that Renz was a great politician in a small way.
Renz smiled. 'Who've you got in mind? Nift?'
'I wish,' Quinn said. 'I'm thinking Tom Coulter.'
Coulter was a burglar and rapist who had allegedly murdered a single mother and her three young children a month ago in New Jersey. He'd used a kitchen knife on them, leaving his fingerprints on its handle and in the blood of the victims. There was virtually no doubt of his guilt. When police located him and approached with a warrant for his arrest, he shot at them and sped away in a stolen SUV. Neither he nor the vehicle had been seen since.
With the victims in their graves, and the disappearance of the killer, Coulter had pretty much dropped out of the news. He'd reportedly been spotted here and there, but none of the leads went anywhere.
'Leak to the media that Coulter's suspected of committing the Torso Murders,' Quinn said.
Renz began chewing the inside of his cheek, thinking it over. 'Think there's enough similarity in M.O.s for them to buy into it?'
'Slash killings in this area-that's all they'll need because they'll be hungry for the story. They'll make Coulter a viable suspect. Rumor will build on rumor. The media will furnish the facts and the credibility.'
'We've seen them do that before,' Renz said.
'It might shake Coulter loose somehow so we can pick him up, but that'd only be a bonus. The main thing is, it'll generate endless ink and TV babble and take media minds off the real investigation.'
'A diversion,' Renz said in a pleased voice. 'Like the diversion created by E-Bliss.'
'Something like that,' Quinn said.
'Raw meat thrown to the media wolves so they'll gorge on it and slow down. Chew on each other in their blood feast.'
'More like that.'
'I like it,' Renz said, closing his eyelids and showing some REM movement, as if enjoying the imagery. 'In fact, I'll enjoy it.'
Thinking no doubt of Cindy Sellers.
40
Victor walked back and forth along Sutton Place, his untucked shirt whipped by the breeze off the East River, his thumbs hooked into the side pockets of his designer jeans. He knew he hadn't actually gone for a pleasant walk, as he'd assured himself. He was pacing. Trying to work off tension that had been building for days.
There were certain thoughts Victor couldn't shake, dreams he couldn't forget. Most of the dreams were about Charlotte Lowenstein. What he and Gloria had done to the poor woman was sick and depraved, but it had, for a while, provided some relief.
Still, Charlotte's death was disturbing to Victor in a way that wouldn't give him peace. He'd never been one to believe the hogwash that dealing out death somehow diminished the dealer. Especially if there was a sound business reason for killing. War, for instance. That was usually a business reason, and we made heroes of people who killed efficiently and in great numbers. The reality was simple. For some people to flourish, others had to die.
That rationale had worked for all of the victims but Charlotte.
As relief, then satiation, was gradually supplanted by reawakening desire, the dreams and dark yearnings returned. It was becoming more and more difficult for Victor to regard Charlotte's death as merely part of a business plan.
But why shouldn't he regard it that way? That was what it was. Victor told himself that repeatedly. One way or another, the E-Bliss.org victim clients were expendable. It was the computer that had decided that. This was the new age of technology, and in a way the dead clients were among the earliest victims of the new technology society. They had to be deleted. What practical difference did it make if he enjoyed ending their lives?
The lion that killed the antelope felt nothing beyond hunger, but did the antelope not suffer and die? What went on in the minds of slayer and slain was irrelevant. That was how the world worked. It was teeming with predators and prey animals, with nothing in between. Only people had their choice. They could become one or the other. Victor had long ago made his choice.
Conscience didn't enter into it.
That was exactly how Victor saw it when it came to the earlier victims, the ones for whom he'd felt little compassion or anything close to sadistic arousal. He was the lion, and they were the antelopes. The world in its turning. The lion did not regret. The lion did not worry.
Still, Charlotte worried Victor. Charlotte in her dying and death was causing him distress. She was the one victim he-and Gloria-had intended to enjoy.
And, God, we did enjoy her!
Gloria deceived her, but we both enjoyed her.
A gray Mercedes sedan turning off East Fifty-sixth onto Sutton Place honked at him, jolting him out of his gloomy self-recrimination.
He waved at the driver in apology for almost stepping off the curb into the car's path, then continued his restless walking.
This isn't like me, what I did to Charlotte, what I'm thinking. It's something I have to shake off or it will control me. And I can shake it off. It isn't me. Not the real me. It isn't.
Victor drew comfort from the fact that he, more than most people, possessed iron self-control.
If only I could sleep without the dreams…
But in truth he knew there was only one thing that would enable him to sleep soundly through the night. It was the one thing that would chase the deep desires roaring through the core of him when he awoke from terrible nightmares in his sweat-drenched bed. That would free him from the persistent thoughts that claimed his daylight hours and prompted him to almost step in front of moving cars. That might someday cause him to make a critical mistake in his work.
Resist though he might, he needed another Charlotte.
Tom Coulter lay on his back in bed in his room at the Clover Motel, ten miles southwest of Hard Oak, Texas. He was a gangly man with raggedly cut black hair and bad teeth. He wore dirt-crusted jeans with a hole in one knee, expensive boots that needed polish, and a shirt unbuttoned to reveal scraggly dark chest hair and prominent ribs. He was perspiring heavily from the heat. He was breathing hard from the heat, too, not to mention the sour smell of his own body, but he was too tired right now to get undressed and shower. He had to rest. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and sighed. Until he'd exhaled, his ribs looked as if they might break through his pale flesh.
In the Clover's gravel parking lot was the dusty green Volvo station wagon he'd stolen in Charmont, Illinois. Its license plate was stolen from a Chevy in a shopping mall in Morristown, Tennessee. Tom had parked it several doors down from his room; if the law came for him, he might have precious seconds to get away.
His jangled nerves made it impossible for him to sleep. He opened his eyes and watched a fly bumping over and over against the dirt-smeared window, buzzing around and trying to find a way out to the light and freedom. He could identify with that fly. Most likely it wouldn't be alive much longer, but there it was, struggling to break through an invisible barrier like the barrier of lousy luck that had always plagued Coulter and blocked his progress. He would have swatted the fly and put it out of its hopeless misery, only it was too much trouble.
He absently reached to the bedside table and used the remote to turn on the TV. But after a glance at the
