“You’ll be shook up in a different way soon,” he reassured her.
“Ron…”
He raised his head. “Okay.” He kissed her between the breasts, using his tongue on her bare flesh, then shifted his weight and stood up. The vibrator was fine with him, anyway. He’d tell her where and how to use it, then let her decide she was ready, then-
“Hurry, please!” she said behind him as he opened the closet door to get the vibrator down from the top shelf. He smiled and didn’t answer.
And gasped when he saw the face and eyes staring out at him, felt the cold blade slice in and up toward his heart. Everything was devoured by the searing pain…his world, his loss, his love, his hope… All of it fell away and he dropped swiftly and breathlessly in a dark elevator plunging toward blackness.
He tried to say Marcy’s name, as if it were the magic that might somehow stop the fall and save him, but that, too, died in darkness.
Marcy, lying back with her eyes closed and massaging her nipples with her fingertips, sensed something was wrong. Then she heard the funny, gasping sound Ron made and sat up in bed as suddenly as if a puppeteer had yanked her strings.
She saw Ron standing against the black background beyond the open closet door, then watched him sink to the floor.
Marcy tried to call to him but made only a strangled, cawing sound.
And out of the closet stepped her nightmare.
Half an hour later, while walking away from the Grahams’ apartment building, their killer decided this had been much better than his last late-night encounter.
It was because of the knife.
He’d left his gun in Martin Elzner’s hand. The police could do wonders with their ballistics tests, and they could connect gun to crime, therefore he could no longer have it in his possession. It was simply too risky, and he’d learned not to take unnecessary risks within the larger risks that he must take. So, as planned, the gun made a convincing prop.
But it should have been a knife to begin with. Always a knife.
So he’d left the gun, wiped clean of fingerprints other than those of Elzner’s dead hand. The silencer, too, was of no further use, so he’d disposed of it by tossing it in a Dumpster. Surely by now it was lost in a vast landfill.
Two days later, at a flea market on the West Side, he’d bought a produce knife, the sort used by warehousemen and shippers of fruits and vegetables. It was a long folding knife, slender, with a bone handle and a high-quality steel blade that would hold an edge.
When he’d bought the knife, he was sure it would do what he needed, and now it had.
18
Most of the blood was from the wife. Quinn could almost taste its coppery scent along the edges of his tongue in a way that brought saliva and a queasy stomach.
Along with Pearl and Fedderman, he stood in the Grahams’ bedroom near the body of the husband, Ronald. The dead man was lying tightly curled on his side on the floor, partly encircling most of the blood that had spilled from him, as if he’d tried to conserve the precious substance and failed. The frozen expression on his face suggested he’d experienced an agonized death. Quinn had seen similar expressions on the faces of too many victims of gunshot or knife wounds that incapacitated immediately but allowed a period of suffering before the end.
“That one’s pretty simple,” said Nift the ME, who was standing near the bed where the wife lay. “He was stabbed once beneath the sternum with an upward angle that got the heart.” He motioned toward Marcella Graham. “This one, on the other hand, is more complicated. Over a dozen stab wounds, and deliberate damage to erogenous zones.” He motioned toward two lumps in the puddled, crusted blood on the bed. “Those are her nipples.”
“Jesus!” Fedderman said.
Nift grinned at the veteran cop’s reaction. “I’d say your killer had his beef with the wife, and Hubby had to be eliminated so he wouldn’t interfere.”
“You’re playing detective,” Quinn said.
“That’s okay,” Nift said. “You can play medical examiner.”
Quinn ignored him and stuck to business. “Did she die early or late in the game?”
“The pattern of bleeding suggests she died with the last stab wound, to the heart.”
“He wanted her to suffer,” Pearl said.
“What about time of death?” Quinn asked.
“Early morning,” Nift said. “One or two o’clock. Three, three-thirty at the outside. I’ll be able to make a closer estimate later.”
Quinn had moved to get a different perspective of the room, which was well furnished and looked freshly painted. Most of the furniture looked new.
“They live here long?” he asked nobody in particular, getting into the mode of command again. An assumption of authority that had become part of him. He sent a look Fedderman’s way.
Fedderman understood and left the bedroom to talk to one of the uniforms who’d taken the call and were first on the scene. Nobody said anything until he returned a few minutes later.
“The Grahams moved in three months ago. Neighbors didn’t know much about them. Guy next door said they argued a lot. He could hear them through the ducts.”
“We oughta find out what else he might have heard through the ducts,” Pearl said.
Quinn seemed not to have heard her. He was studying the room, the way the dead man lay, the closet door hanging open and how the clothes were draped on the hangers, the way the wife was sprawled on her back with her nightgown up so her breasts showed. What had happened to her breasts. He felt his stomach turn and he swallowed bile that rose bitterly at the back of his throat. All these years on the job, and he still didn’t understand how people could do this kind of thing to each other.
He made himself walk over and look more closely at the wife, and at the area around her body.
“Looks like our killer was hiding in the closet,” he said, “and surprised the husband when he opened the door. After stabbing the husband, he went for the wife.”
“Killer musta gotten blood on him from the wife,” Fedderman said.
Quinn wasn’t so sure. Someone expert enough with a knife knew how people bled, and could avoid being marked.
“No sign of him having washed up,” Pearl said, “but we can check the drains for traces of blood to be sure.”
“Maybe she had a lover on the side, and Hubby came home unexpectedly,” Fedderman said. “The lover hid in the closet, but maybe made some noise the husband heard and went to investigate. Bad things ensued.”
“Hubby must have had time to get undressed and ready for bed,” Pearl said with an edge of sarcasm.
“Could have gone that way. The wife’s lover mighta been trapped in the closet for hours, hoping for an opportunity to leave before daylight.”
“Like in those French bedroom farces,” Pearl said.
Nift laughed.
Quinn and the others looked at him.
“Detectives!” Nift said. “Your theories are all bullshit.”
Quinn cocked his head at the little man. “Why so sure?”
“You didn’t look close enough at the husband. He’s still gripping the knife he used to kill his wife, then to stab himself through the heart.”
Quinn returned to the husband and got down on one knee beside him. He could see the end of a knife handle in one of the dead hands drawn close to the husband’s midsection. He moved an arm slightly to peer at the knife,
