hear my hypothesis?'
'That's really why I'm here, isn't it?'
He ignored her question and continued, but there was a note of sadness in his voice. 'Here are some facts,' he said. 'You were with the Michigan state police when you sought out your assignment to this case. Ed Keller traveled to New York from Detroit. You worked skillfully in guiding the investigation, gaining credibility each time you were right about something. You have an impressive resume, but there's a hole in it during the first period when the Carver was active years ago here in New York. When Erin Keller visited the office the first time, you wore a pair of reading glasses. You haven't worn them before or since. You succeeded in avoiding Erin after that. And I noticed that whenever we saw the shadow woman at or near a crime scene, you weren't with us.'
Addie sipped again at her drink and met his gaze directly. 'Anything else?'
Quinn smiled but his eyes didn't join in. 'Yes, Addie. You were never in the slightest really interested in me.'
She became smaller in the chair, wounded by his words.
Then she put down her glass and began to unbutton her blouse.
'Addie-'
'Be quiet, Quinn.'
She continued to work the buttons, and then used both hands to open the blouse wide.
He could only stare at the false breasts that were some kind of foam creation.
'That's why the Carver broke off his attack on you,' Quinn said.
'No one knows for sure. Perhaps something surprised him, frightened him away. As you know, he's the reason why, as Addie Price, I became a police profiler. I wanted revenge, and I thought I could finally attain it by getting assigned to this case. I could do what Chrissie Keller wanted to do, use you and your detectives to locate the killer. Chrissie must have murdered that homeless woman and mutilated her in a way that would draw out the Carver, or at least cause the police to reopen the investigation.'
'It worked too well,' Quinn said.
'The Carver murdered Joyce House and Lilly Branston,' Addie said, 'and that allowed us to get closer to him.'
'We still didn't get him,' Quinn pointed out.
'We did,' Addie said. 'You summoned Keller as Edward Archer to New York on his cell phone, but Lisa Bolt, who at a certain point had begun working for me, will attest that Keller didn't fly to New York. He was already here. You were using him to bait Chrissie, while he was using you to bait her. If he could kill Chrissie, his secret would be safe no matter what anyone else said. If you check Keller's resume, you'll find a hole in it, too, for the same time period when there was a hole in mine. While I was trying to fit the fragments of myself back together after he attacked me and was scared away before he could slit my throat. You'll also find he was in New York at the time of the Carver murders.'
Quinn stood all the way up from the sofa arm and paced a few steps back and forth. He stayed standing. 'You're telling me Edward Keller was the Carver? Your attacker wore a mask when he almost killed you years ago in Detroit, so how can you possibly be sure?'
'I recognized his voice. And Lisa Bolt saw him undressing for bed through the cracked door of the cheap hotel where he was staying here in New York.'
'And…?'
'Call your medical examiner. Ask him about the corpse.'
Quinn called the morgue and eventually was put through to Nift.
'Anything unusual about Edward Keller's body?' he asked.
Nift didn't say anything for a while. Then: 'It's got bullets in it, Quinn. That's unusual.'
'Something else,' Quinn said.
Again the long silence. 'Call Renz,' Nift said, and hung up.
Carver called Renz, who also played dumb.
'It's going to be in the news tomorrow anyway,' Quinn lied. 'You might as well tell me.'
'What news?'
'Nift knows it. He's sitting on the goddamned body. How do you think the word got out?'
'That asshole!' Renz said.
'You've realized what he was for years, so why'd you try to keep a secret with him in the know?'
'I shouldn't have. Let Cindy Sellers have her way.'
'She usually gets it,' Quinn said.
'I wanted to keep it out of the media, didn't want more questions, more attention drawn to the fact that we carried this thing in the cold-case file for years.'
'What are we talking about?' Quinn asked.
'Keller's torso. His nipples have been removed. And there's a large letter X carved into his chest.'
'Jesus!'
'The wounds are recent, and were almost certainly self-inflicted.'
Quinn stood quietly, putting it all together.
'Jesus!' he said again.
Renz was saying something else, but Quinn hung up. He knew the real reason Renz wanted Keller's self- inflicted injuries kept secret. It was critical to his political ambitions that Chrissie remain the latest and last Carver. He wanted the case to stay on the record exactly as it was, wrapped tight and neatly filed away, a fading part of the city's ignoble past.
Quinn looked at Addie, who had the answers. Who'd from the start had most of them.
'There you have it,' she said. 'Insofar as anyone ever has all of anything.'
'Keller might have been the Carver all the way through. Chrissie might have been innocent.'
'Might,' Addie said. 'We'll never know for sure.'
'Other things we can know for sure,' Quinn said.
'But are you sure you want to know them?'
'I'm sure I have to,' Quinn said.
82
Addie finished her drink and then stared at the ice cubes, as if there might be some revelation there now that the liquid was gone.
'Nothing between us was real,' Addie said.
Quinn nodded. 'I somehow knew that from the beginning.'
'But you didn't know you knew.'
'I still can't be sure. Not yet.'
'Yes, you can,' Addie said. 'Nothing's been real for me since Edward Keller. I'm afraid nothing ever can be. I followed him to Detroit, then from Detroit to New York, unsure he was the one who attacked me, who later killed Tiffany. I knew he wasn't someone named Edward Archer, though I wasn't sure he was the Carver. But I became sure.'
'Why did he try to kill you, of all people, in Detroit?'
'My watching him must have attracted his attention, and something about me disturbed or attracted him.'
'But why, after attacking you, did he come here to New York to stalk and kill more victims?'
'I don't know for sure,' Addie said. 'Maybe it was because he was almost caught and he realized the risk he was taking, so he wanted a bigger city to disappear in. Or a larger pool of prospective victims. Maybe he followed Tiffany in New York. Maybe there was something special about me. I'd been a surprise to him, and he ran from it. He was sure I hadn't seen his face, and he wouldn't know I recognized his voice. I couldn't prove anything. After he killed Tiffany, he'd be safe. No one would believe Chrissie in a he-said, she-said confrontation about childhood molestations, even if she did work up the courage to speak out. He didn't see her as a threat, and I'd hardly make a
