“Which are the size worn by Ann Spellman,” Quinn said.
Nift looked at him in faux admiration. “Damn, you’re smart.”
“Sometimes,” Quinn said.
“He puts the previous victim’s panties on them,” Pearl said softly, explaining to Jody.
“Why?”
Pearl shrugged. “Why does he kill them in the first place?”
“Something different here, though.” Nift had held something back, as he often did for dramatic effect.
Quinn arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“She had a broken ankle.”
“ He broke it?” Pearl asked.
“I don’t think so. Be a good detective and look over there.”
“The cat?” Pearl asked, seeing a tabby-striped gray cat slide around the corner of the sofa and disappear. Sometimes she wondered if she was the only person in New York who didn’t own a cat. City of cats.
“Not the cat. Though she might be the only witness to the crime. Over there.”
Pearl looked where Nift was pointing and saw a metal cane and a plastic cast. The cane was leaning in a corner. The cast was near it on the floor as if it had been carelessly tossed there. “Looks like the killer removed the cast and used the ankle to torture her. A broken bone must have been like a gift to him.”
“You would understand that,” Pearl said.
“Another thing,” Nift said, ignoring her. He pointed to a small metal object near where the victim’s long hair spilled onto the carpet from her thrown-back head. “That was balanced on her forehead when she was discovered.”
“What is it?” Quinn asked, looking closer.
“It’s a roller-skate key,” Pearl said. “The sort that tightens the kind of skates that fit over your shoes.”
“What the hell could that mean?” Fedderman asked. He looked at Jody as if she might supply the answer. She felt flattered that he was including her in the conversation. “The key to the case…” she offered.
There was a ripple of laughter.
“She might be right,” Quinn said, in such a way that all laughter stopped. What the hell am I doing now, getting protective?
“One thing it might explain,” Pearl said. “She might have hurt herself skating, and the broken ankle is why he wasn’t able to lure her someplace and decided to kill her in her apartment. She’s the first victim found indoors.”
“How many of Daniel Danielle’s victims were found indoors?” Fedderman asked.
“Two out of twelve,” Pearl said. “Of course, he might have murdered over a hundred women, so we don’t know for sure how many were indoors when they were killed.”
“More than a hundred? ” Jody asked.
Quinn stared at her somberly. “It’s a dangerous world.”
She looked dubious and shook her head. Even let slip a slight smile.
Oh, God! He was beginning to feel like a parent again, not being taken seriously.
Pearl was looking at him in a kind of surprised way. Had she experienced the same sensation?
She had, he was sure.
It was disconcerting.
“I’ve got a question,” Jody said. “What’s going to happen to the victim’s cat?”
“No!” Quinn and Pearl said simultaneously.
37
J ody, unaware of a similar cat that had run away, renamed this dark gray tabby cat Snitch, after a cat she’d had when she was ten years old. She would feed it and it would sleep in her room. Everyone agreed to that but the cat. The food plan was okay with Snitch, but she slept where she damn well pleased. Sometimes that was at the foot of Quinn and Pearl’s bed.
Living in the brownstone was light-years better than living in the cramped apartment Jody’d had. And she was allowed to keep the rent money allocated to her. The only downside was that she had to travel farther to get to work, across town to the East Side.
Jody stood now in the Enders and Coil conference room with the firm’s avuncular and wise senior partner, Joseph Coil. Well-padded black leather chairs rimmed the long mahogany table. There was on the table a large crystal vase of incredibly realistic silk roses as a centerpiece that was removed when the room was being used for serious business. That Coil hadn’t sat down, or invited Jody to sit, indicated this was to be a short, informal conversation.
The light was at Coil’s back. Behind him stretched a panoramic view of the East River. He politely shifted position so the light wasn’t in Jody’s eyes, as if to assure her he wasn’t going to subject her to that obvious strategy of domination. He wasn’t playing games.
Coil smiled at her in a way so genuine she had to smile back. His blue eyes shone with bonhomie, and his lips curved upward in a way that suggested he smiled even in his sleep. His hair was expensively trimmed and gray, his cheeks so rosy they appeared almost rouged.
Jody assumed this was going to be a conversation about her unwarranted interest in the Dash-Meeding eminent domain case.
But it wasn’t. Yet.
“I realized,” Coil said, “that the two of us had never had a serious friendly conversation. I wanted to talk to you about the law in general. To get your views on it.”
Jody was surprised. Why would a man like this be interested in the views of a lowly intern? “I agree with the position that our legal system is fallible, but it’s the best there is.” Yada, yada. But she did believe it.
“And possibly the most pliable and useful,” Coil said. The smile never left his face.
“I suppose,” Jody said. “Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it in those terms.”
“Well, it takes time to understand the utilitarian side of the law.” He bowed his head and shook it slowly side to side, as if amused. “You have grasped by now that it is quite malleable?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The law is in fact so malleable that at a certain high level it is more about how to manipulate the system within the penumbra of the law, than about the law itself.”
Jody struggled for a moment with that one. “I can see how it might be used that way,” she said.
“The longer you practice the law, and the more importance your duties take on, the more you come to understand the law’s true and most important purpose. It’s like higher math: the loftier and more complex it is, the further it moves into the realm of what might be thought of as a more sublime logic.”
“It becomes more and more malleable,” Jody said.
Coil fairly beamed. “Smart woman. At a certain plateau, that malleability is what it’s all about. It’s vitally important that you comprehend that. Justice, truth, guilt, innocence, those all lose their meaning under the sword of the law; and the clay of malleability is worked in ways never imagined at the beginning of a legal process. Malleability is the king of the court.”
“I think I-”
“No, no. Give it some thought before you decide you really do understand.”
Jody smiled. “All right, I will.”
“I won’t insult you by reminding you it doesn’t matter whether our clients are guilty or innocent.”
“Everyone deserves the best counsel they can afford,” Jody said. “For that matter, the most malleable.”
“Ah!” Joseph Coil said, obviously pleased that he might have an apt pupil here. Well, that was what Jody was supposed to be, coming out of Waycliffe. And with Elaine Pratt and Chancellor Schueller’s recommendations.
He didn’t say anything else for a few seconds, and Jody thought their conversation might have ended.
But it hadn’t.
“It’s come to our notice that you’ve shown an interest in Dash-Meeding,” Coil said.
