“I’ve gotta get some air before I puke,” Frist said with a sideways glance at Quinn. He eased around a puddle of blood and out the door.
“He seems so sensitive,” Pearl said.
Jefferson paid her no attention and addressed Quinn. “You talked to the ME, so he told you about stab wounds and such?”
“Yeah, he was very cooperative.”
“For such a dickhead,” Pearl added.
Jefferson grinned and flipped his notepad closed. “I heard she was kinda rowdy,” he said to Quinn.
“Oh, she is.”
Not giving up his grin, Jefferson gave them a little half salute and left the kitchen to join his partner.
“What a putz,” Pearl said.
“Forget being testy for a while. What do you think here?”
“Gotta be our guy,” Pearl said.
Quinn stooped low and looked at the couple whose marriage had ended so suddenly and unexpectedly. Lisa had been quite beautiful. Leon, the older of the two, with gray hair and beard stubble, had been a lucky man.
Pearl went to the refrigerator and opened it. “Gift box of chocolates,” she said. “Expensive. Any woman would appreciate a present like that.”
Quinn stood up, hearing the cartilage in his knees crack. “I’m sure we’ll learn that Lisa loved chocolate.”
“And she loved jewelry, judging by the wedding ring she slept in and those diamond stud earrings she must have been too tired to remove when she went to bed last night. They look like they cost what a cop makes in a year.”
“She and Hubby owned the shop,” Quinn said, “so why not?”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” Pearl said. “I was complaining.”
There was nothing unexpected in the bedroom. The kingsize bed was unmade, two pillows obviously used and the covers thrown back. It looked as if the bed’s occupants had gotten up in mild haste and expected to return.
Pearl and Quinn didn’t spend a lot of time there.
When they returned to the living room, the techs were still busy and Nift hadn’t left. He was talking on the phone near the door. Pearl drifted away and took a short tour of the rest of the apartment, in part to admire the decor.
When she got back, Quinn was standing by the window. Pearl went over and stood next to him, then looked down to see what he was staring at.
Jefferson and Frist were below, talking to the uniformed doorman, who must have just come on duty, his schedule altered by the murders.
“I went into the dining room,” Pearl said softly. “There’s a vase of yellow roses in there. Fresh ones.”
Quinn looked over at her.
“This is the third murder with at least one yellow rose present someplace in the apartment.”
“More pattern, huh?”
“I’d say so. And it’s always possible Mary Navarre, the only roseless victim, received roses earlier and they wilted and she threw them out. I know they weren’t in her trash, but she might have dropped them down to the incinerator.”
Fedderman entered and walked over to join them.
“Let’s go,” Quinn said, sounding businesslike.
“Where?” Fedderman asked.
“It’s ten o’clock. Frist and Jefferson are down there interviewing the doorman, who was no doubt asleep at the time of the murders and doesn’t know anything. You two start with the neighbors. By the time Frist and Jefferson get done jerking around outside, you’ll be a couple of apartments ahead of them.”
“Sounds right,” Pearl said.
The three of them moved toward the door. Nift had just hung up the phone and was standing there.
Pearl paused in front of him. “Leonard or Robinson?” she asked.
Nift stared at her. “Huh?”
“You called me Sugar Ray. Which Sugar Ray?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Who the fuck cares? Only Sugar Ray I know is Leonard.”
“I’m Robinson,” Pearl said, and gave his tie a sharp yank so the gold clasp popped off and bounced on the carpet. “Find that or you’ll be a suspect.”
She was out the door and gone before Nift could get over his shocked anger and think of a counterpunch.
Anna Caruso stood across the street from the apartment building Quinn and his detectives had entered. She wasn’t noticeable because she was only one of several dozen people gathered in a knot of onlookers that shrank and grew as passersby joined the group and others left.
There really wasn’t much to see except parked police and emergency vehicles, including an ambulance. What people were waiting to see, Anna knew, was if someone would be carted out and placed in the ambulance either alive or dead. That was how people were. Since the ambulance had been there for some time and there was obviously no rush, the odds were improved that someone inside the building was dead. Anna had heard several of her fellow gawkers speculate that this might be another Night Prowler murder.
Anna shrank back a few feet to be less noticeable as her interest increased. The two guys in suits who had to be cops had left after talking with the doorman, and now Quinn emerged from the building.
He, too, walked over to accost the doorman, who excused himself for a moment to hold the door open for one of the building’s tenants. The doorman seemed a little annoyed, as if murder shouldn’t interfere with his job. There were doors to open, packages to sign for, cabs to hail.
After about five minutes Quinn left the beleaguered doorman alone and walked toward the corner.
Anna followed, hanging back and staying, as was her strategy from watching movies and TV, on the opposite side of the street. Tailing somebody really wasn’t all that difficult. For Anna, it had become an obsession.
What would it be like to be a cop, instead of playing music?
At the intersection a cab pulled over near a fire hydrant and a woman laden with shopping bags struggled out from the backseat.
Quinn picked up his pace and retrieved one of the plastic bags the woman had dropped, then exchanged a few words with her and took over the cab. Anna saw him in sharp profile as he leaned forward in the back of the cab and told the driver their destination.
She decided not to try to follow. What was the use? By the time she found a cab herself, Quinn would be well out of sight. The “follow that cab” method seemed to work only in fiction.
She stood rooted by anger as she watched the cab drive away. Usually she rode the bus or took the subway. Quinn could afford cab fare these days, on the money the city was paying him-the city that should have prosecuted him.
Anna wandered back to the building, where she knew two more Night Prowler victims probably lay dead.
Her thoughts were jumbled by her insistent rage. She should feel sorry for the victims, but she could only feel sorry for herself. After all, if it weren’t for the Night Prowler and his victims, Quinn would still be under whatever rock he’d retreated to in order to escape a trial and prison.
While Anna lived with her rage and shame, circumstances had worked in her attacker’s favor. A serial killer roamed the city, and the police thought Quinn was their best chance to stop him. The city needed Quinn, so the city embraced him-after discarding Anna.
It isn’t fair! she kept repeating to herself as she walked faster and faster.
Her anger was a driving force she could no longer control.
It isn’t fair!
44
