Marinara sauce dripped from a corner of Pearl’s mouth. Her tongue darted out and she licked it away. Shrugged. “Whatever.”

Pearl, Pearl…

46

Pearl was glad she’d drawn this assignment. She’d given her interview with Jock Sanderson a lot of thought. The way she figured it, they were already in the territory where the Skinner might assume the woman who was his main target, the focus of his revenge, would seem to be simply one in a line of Skinner victims, none distinguishable from the others. Thus none of the suspects would in any meaningful way be distinguishable from the others. At least that was how the killer would see it. When he thought his safety in numbers was adequate, he would kill the one true object of his rampage.

And of course, his one true object couldn’t be distinguished by being the last killed.

Perhaps that one true object had been Judith Blaney.

Sanderson seemed surprised to see Pearl, which struck her as odd, considering they had an appointment. Pearl wondered if he preferred that his questioner were a man. Maybe a woman seeking the killer of women made him uneasy. If so, all the better.

Afraid of women? Sometimes these creeps are deeply afraid.

Jock Sanderson was a medium-height man whose compact build made him appear shorter. It was Pearl’s experience that men with that physical characteristic were deceptively strong. But then Quinn was tall and rangy, and he was unusually strong even for his size. Pearl warned herself not to categorize people on the basis of small samplings; in her business that could prove fatal.

Sanderson had the kind of eyes that picked up the dominant color around them, and a full head of wavy black hair. He would have been downright handsome if there hadn’t been a crookedness to his features that spoiled the effect. He had a nice smile.

“Please come in,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his right arm to invite her grandly into his squalid apartment, as if he were a butler at a posh estate.

Well, the apartment wasn’t actually squalid. Though the furniture was a bit worn and mismatched, the place was clean and ordered. So much so, in fact, that Pearl pegged Sanderson for kind of a neatnik.

As she moved past him he did a nifty little dance to get out of her way, as if he wanted to stay on the perimeter of her attention but not too close.

Pearl crossed the living room and sat on a sofa draped with a rose-pattern slipcover. It reminded her of the sofa in her mother’s living room when she was a kid. There was what looked like a cigarette burn in it.

“Cool enough in here for you?” Sanderson asked, smiling for about the third time since she’d arrived. He had even white teeth that he obviously liked to flash.

“Just right,” Pearl said. Though it was past eleven and the morning hadn’t yet heated up, an old window unit was humming away on alert without the compressor engaged. There was a faint odor in the place, as if someone had recently been frying fish. She drew her notepad from a pocket of her linen jacket and found the pencil tucked inside its leather cover. She flipped to the first unmarked page. “You said on the phone that you already knew about Judith Blaney’s death.”

“True,” Sanderson said. “I always watch local news in the morning before I go to bed.” He sat perched on the substantial arm of a hulking chair covered with brown corduroy. “The murder of a beautiful woman. Another Skinner victim. That kind of thing doesn’t take long to make the news.”

“You said you watched the morning news ‘before’ going to bed?”

“True.” As if Pearl had gotten another one right. The white smile. “I work nights. Usually get home sometime around six in the morning. Then I shower, shave, eat a healthy breakfast, and go to bed.”

Too much detail, Pearl thought. Lying?

“How did you feel when you heard about Judith Blaney’s death?” Pearl asked.

“I was glad.” No change of expression on the almosthandsome features.

“She was tortured before she died.”

“I know a lot about torture.”

Pearl raised an eyebrow.

“From being in prison,” Sanderson explained.

“Tortured at whose hands?”

“You’d be surprised. A rapist isn’t high on the scale of respect when it comes to the other prisoners. And for that matter, let’s include the guards. Some of them think the thing to do is to make sure the inmate understands what it feels like to be raped. There are too many unguarded places, times. There’s no one to stop them from doing what they want.”

“You were raped in prison?”

“Many more times than once.” He swallowed hard enough for her to hear the phlegm crack in his throat. The expression on his face caused a pang of pity in Pearl.

“I know it won’t help to say I’m sorry,” she said, “but I am.” It was odd, she thought, that he’d make it a point to bring up the subject. Other than as an explanation of what he’d had to go through because of Judith Blaney. Didn’t he know he was giving himself a motive?

“I was physically what you would call attractive when I went behind the walls,” Sanderson said. “I was repeatedly beaten, along with the other indignities. That’s why I look now like I might be an ex-boxer.”

Pearl didn’t think he looked like a former fighter, but she let him go ahead and think she did. His hands were too delicate looking to have been taped and used as blunt instruments.

“You raise my curiosity,” she said.

“I’m not gay,” he said. “Never was.” Sanderson drew a deep breath, as if to steady himself. “But that’s not what you’re here to talk about.”

“No,” Pearl said. She tested the pencil to make sure it had a sharp enough point. “Judith Blaney was killed sometime around eleven o’clock last night.”

“I’ve got some coffee on,” Sanderson said. “Would you like some?”

“No,” Pearl said. This guy was something. “I would like some answers instead of more verbal dancing around.”

“Sure. My bad.” He actually looked embarrassed. “At ten last night I was working with a crew cleaning up the old Superior Theater on West Forty-sixth Street. Some kind of church or other had rented it for a revival meeting that went until just past ten. We were waiting and started working as soon as the place cleared.” He shifted position on the chair arm. “You know the Superior? It’s been shut down as a movie theater for years, but it’s still in use. Different kinds of events take place there.”

“I know it,” Pearl said. “It was a porno theater in its later years.”

“Yeah. Shame.”

“Who employs you, Mr. Sanderson?”

“Company called Sweep ’Em Up. It’s a janitorial service that cleans up the venues after sporting events, lectures, political rallies… whatever. You can probably tell from this apartment that it doesn’t pay well, but you don’t get your pick of jobs when prison’s on your resume.”

“How’d you get this one?”

“There’s a prisoner-placement service, a charity thing. And my AA sponsor Dave vouched for me. So far, it’s worked out well enough, but I’d like to get something better someday. Move up in the world, far as I can go, anyway.”

Another suspect with a drinking problem. Well, that should be no surprise. “What else does Sweep ’Em Up clean?” Pearl asked.

“Oh, we’re a big outfit. We clean Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, hotel ballrooms…”

“How long you been working there?”

“Couple of years. It’s the only job I’ve had since I got out. It’s helped me stay straight, stay out of trouble.”

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