After a while, he put her back on her knees, her body bowed in an almost impossible arch. Perhaps someone with a powerful telescope, on some distant star, could see the horrified expression in her staring eyes.
There must be someone out there in the cosmos who can help you.
Well, maybe not.
He began working again with the knife, keeping his thumb and forefinger low on the blade, the way the killer had done with the dead girl. The screams she made now were like the dead girl’s had been, full throated but able to travel only as far as her taped mouth before changing to a frenetic low humming that barely escaped into the night.
He worked on her for quite a while there in the otherwise silent, isolated clearing, thinking about the dead girl. Her body began a frenetic bouncing and vibration, her bare breasts jiggling and heaving. This wasn’t a surprise. Rory got comfortable and watched her eyes, watched them very carefully until all light and comprehension went out of them. Like the dead girl’s eyes.
Then he used the knife to remove her breasts. It was easier than he’d imagined, no bone or gristle to cut, only soft flesh.
He considered throwing the severed breasts into the woods, letting the animals dispose of them. Then he had a better idea and decided to keep them.
Breathing hard, he stood up and went back to the car. He wrapped the breasts in an old wadded plastic cleaner’s bag tightly, so they wouldn’t leak. Then he got a shovel from the trunk.
The earth was soft, and it didn’t take long to bury Sherri.
Standing in the middle of the clearing, Rory looked carefully around him. It was as if he and Sherri had never been here. He would get back in his mother’s car and drive away, and all of this might never have happened.
It might never have happened, so it didn’t happen.
There would be a big fuss over Sherri, but she’d left on the bus and not come back. Not the first girl like her to do that. Things would quiet down after a while. The world would go on. People would forget.
He wouldn’t forget Sherri, though. Not ever.
The dead girl.
68
New York, the present
Q uinn decided to talk to someone about Dr. Grace Moore’s files himself. After all, hadn’t her patient Linda called on him for help? Hadn’t there been dozens of other women who called Q and A or the NYPD recently maintaining that they were in danger, requesting protection? There simply were too few people to protect them, even if most of their calls weren’t legitimate and they weren’t in actual danger.
The trouble was, some of them were in danger, and it was impossible to know which. It was a small percentage, but they were real. Linda Brooks and Grace Moore had been real, and the danger had been real, and here Quinn was investigating their deaths when he felt he should have known or sensed something that would have prevented them.
That was the problem; he couldn’t predict the future, and the killer could forge it.
The building containing Dr. Moore’s office was a haven from the heat. Everything seemed to be made of marble other than the occasional potted plant. Quinn found himself wondering what it would feel like to lie down on the cool lobby floor.
Per Quinn’s instructions, Pearl and Fedderman were helping Sal and Harold canvass two square blocks of the neighborhood around where Linda Brooks and the doctor had been murdered. Old-fashioned, irreplaceable police legwork. Quinn wasn’t sure where Weaver was; she was Renz’s special conduit to the commissioner’s office, which made her something of an independent operator. Quinn liked it that way. Pearl and Weaver were better kept apart. They could be fuse and explosive.
The elevator in Dr. Moore’s building was warm and slow and seemed to stop at every other floor before Quinn got out of the stifling little car. A woman in the elevator had been wearing too much perfume, and he was still trying to fight the urge to sneeze.
When Quinn entered the doctor’s office, he found himself in a small anteroom with cream-colored walls and beige furniture. There was a rounded walnut desk with a computer, a printer, and phone on it. He heard nothing but the faint rushing sound of traffic in the street below.
He called hello.
A few seconds later, a door to what he assumed was a larger office opened. A distraught-looking young woman with frizzy dark hair pulled back to make her round face seem even rounder, peered out at him through dark-framed glasses. “Help you?”
Quinn thought she looked like the one who needed help. Maybe with her midterm exams.
He flashed his identification and explained who he was and why he was there.
The young woman, who said her name was Cleo, looked confused and started gnawing her lower lip with large white teeth. “I’m not sure if I should even talk to you about one of Dr. Moore’s patients, much less let you see the case file.”
Quinn gave her a smile that surprised her with its kindness. “What were you to the deceased, dear?”
“I was Dr. Moore’s part-time assistant and receptionist,” Cleo said.
“Did you ever meet Linda Brooks?”
“A few times. When she came in for appointments.”
“Do you know why she was being treated? Her… issue?”
“Not exactly. And like I said, I’m not sure I should be discussing-”
“You don’t doubt my identity, do you, dear?”
“Of course not. I’ve seen you in the papers, on TV news. But don’t you need a warrant or something?”
“I can get one, if you want to go on record as being uncooperative.”
“Oh, I don’t mean to be uncooperative. I just don’t know what the patient’s rights are, even though…”
“The patient is dead,” Quinn finished for her. “I suspect that if Linda Brooks could somehow communicate with us, she’d want you to let the people investigating her and Dr. Moore’s deaths examine her file.”
“Probably,” Cleo conceded.
“While you’re making up your mind,” Quinn said, “can you tell me why Linda Brooks was being treated?”
Cleo fought with her indecision for several seconds, then said, “I guess. She was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.”
“Meaning?” He wanted to keep Cleo talking.
“She suspected people of being out to get her. And she had hallucinations. Heard voices.” Cleo looked around helplessly. “I don’t know the details. Dr. Moore didn’t talk much to me about her patients.”
“Still, you learned things.”
“I learned things,” Cleo agreed.
“Had Linda Brooks been getting better?”
“There was no getting better for her. She had to learn to adjust to being… disturbed.”
“Was she disturbed about anything in particular lately?”
Cleo held on to the back of the desk chair and looked away from Quinn. Then back at him. “She thought someone was following her. A man. She’d thought that before.”
“Was he someone she knew?”
“No, but he’d follow her, and sometimes when she’d get home, she’d know he’d been in her apartment.”
“How?”
“That I don’t know. You’d have to consult the file.”
Neither of them spoke for what seemed a long time. Quinn knew when to hold his silence. He made a bet with himself.
“The files are in those brown cabinets behind the doctor’s desk,” Cleo said.
Quinn smiled slightly but said nothing.
Cleo stood straighter. “I’m going down and around the block for a coffee. Do you mind keeping an eye on
