photo of someone else, all part of a world the Night Prowler wanted to remain in the past. The photo had been taken by Cara, obviously on the spur of the moment, then put somewhere and forgotten.
And now here it was, an instant, a reality, preserved and displayed years and years later, as if a page in an album had been turned. Photo by Cara, a fraction of time in our bubble of time, in which we lived, loved, feared…
The buzzing began again, a gray cacophony of every color, not loud now, but growing louder.
As the Night Prowler watched the TV, a retired FBI profiler was explaining Luther’s mental illness in pseudomedical terms and talking about what kind of man he’d be now. An artist’s conception of how Luther might appear at different weights and with varying hairstyles and beard and mustache styles showed on split screen while the former profiler yammered away in her strange combination of scientific and media speak.
She knows nothing about her subject! Nothing!
Neither does the pathetically untalented artist!
Some of the media gave credit to the journalist who “broke” the story, a man named Everson. But the Night Prowler knew who really found and loosed the relentless demons from the past. It was the demon of the present- Quinn!
Of course the Night Prowler knew why. He was supposed to think now that Quinn was on his heels, ready to run up his back if he made the slightest mistake.
Or if he had made a mistake!
Quinn was a tracker, a stalker who dealt in the past and eventually closed on a present where he and his prey would meet. And it was the pressure he could exert that made his prey slow down, hesitate, and make a seemingly innocuous wrong move that could lead to disaster. It was like an obscure code, the rules of this game, which Quinn assumed he knew better than his quarry. Advantage, Quinn: The pursuer could make many mistakes and the game would continue, while the pursued could afford only one miscue and it would be game over. The increasing pressure on the hunted would inevitably lead to that fatal oversight or miscalculation.
So Quinn thinks.
The Night Prowler used the remote to switch off the TV. He smiled grimly. Different people felt pressure in different ways, and found different ways to relieve it. White powder, pink sex, green money, red vengeance, the blue eyes of the gods…
The Night Prowler went to the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink and groped in darkness for the handgun that was hidden behind the plumbing and wrapped in an oily rag.
He got the gun out and stared at it. An ugly, functional thing, manufactured to kill. Black forever… It had belonged to a man the Night Prowler knew sold drugs and would not report its theft. He absently ran a fingertip over the rough texture of its checkered grip, an indecipherable topography of its past.
A gun like this, who knew its history?
Who knew its future?
He rewrapped the gun and carefully wedged it back in its hiding place beneath the sink.
But out of sight wasn’t necessarily out of mind. Just as Quinn was now never completely out of the Night Prowler’s thoughts, which condition was certainly and precisely what Quinn intended. That was his strategy. That was part of how the pressure was applied.
That was how it was supposed to work. Ask any TV pundit or armchair psychologist who’d never shed anyone’s blood and who never dreamed their own might be shed. There were well-documented ways to understand and hunt down the serial killer. Millions of words had explained the who and how of the phenomenon and even the why. Book after book had been written on the subject.
But not all prey were alike. Sometimes the hunter wasn’t fully aware of what he was tracking.
Sometimes the hunter wished that somewhere along the trail, he’d missed a turn.
Black forever…
Lisa Ide’s Visa card showed a charge for lunch the afternoon before her murder. She’d dined at an East Side restaurant Quinn had never heard of, Petit Poisson. Fifty-nine dollars with tip for a salad, pastry, and drinks. Nothing petite about the price.
He doubted that Lisa had dined alone, so he sent Pearl to see what she might learn from the restaurant’s staff.
47
When Quinn had first brought up the subject of Petit Poisson, Pearl assumed he was inviting her to lunch, and someplace expensive. But this was work, the Job. They were being colleagues, not lovers. She wondered if it was possible to be both.
When she walked into the restaurant, she understood why the prices were high. This was a premier rent area, and there was room for only about a dozen tables.
What Petit Poisson lacked in size, it made up for in elegance. Pearl could imagine sitting at one of the smaller round tables with Quinn, next to thick red drapes over leaded windows facing the street. Chairs and a large sideboard were elaborate and gilded. Light was furnished mainly by candles and an ornate brass chandelier dangling low on a thick chain from the center of the beamed ceiling. The restaurant tried, but it wasn’t a cute place as its name suggested; it was more as if a rowdy peasant tavern had been bought and redecorated by decadent dandies just in time to beat the revolution.
Pearl dealt firmly with the imperious maitre d’, who referred her to a waiter named Chan, who pronounced his name as “Shawn.” He spoke with what sounded like a genuine French accent.
Chan was amiable and cooperative and of indeterminate lineage. Yes, he must have waited on that table at the time on the charge receipt. Yes, he recognized the charming woman in the photograph Pearl showed him. (Here if he had a mustache, Pearl was sure he would have twirled it.) No, he hadn’t realized she was the latest victim of the Night Prowler. He shook his head sadly at the waste and the pity. No, she hadn’t dined alone. There were two women with her, approximately her age. Of course there would be a record of their presence if they paid by charge, and who paid with cash these days?
The restaurant manager, who wore a silky, flawlessly tailored blue suit, sashayed over and introduced himself as Yves with a silent S. He politely inquired if there was a problem. When Pearl flashed her ID and explained that the problem was a homicide, he guided them to a far corner of the restaurant in case one of the few early diners might glance over and be gastronomically upset by police presence.
Pearl was polite but gave the impression she might any second draw her weapon and shout “Freeze!” Yves was cooperative, though not as friendly as Chan, and without nearly as convincing an accent.
He used the accent to instruct the waiter to return to his station. Yves said it as if he meant Chan’s station in life.
When Chan had departed, Yves ushered Pearl into a tiny, cluttered office. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as the dining area, or as Gallic, though there was a big color photo of the Eiffel Tower framed and mounted on the wall behind the desk. It was taken on a misty night starred by the many lights of Paris, and the famous landmark had probably never looked better.
Yves said the charge and debit forms from the date of Lisa Ide’s lunch hadn’t yet been transferred to the bank, so there should be a record of who shared the table with her, assuming of course they paid separately by card.
He got several banded reams of receipts from a safe alongside his desk and sat rummaging through them, flicking them rapidly with his thumb like a gambler counting money. The receipts were apparently in chronological order, because when he got to the desired date and time, he slowed his rampage through the forms and settled on one, then two more, and separated them from the others.
Pearl already had a copy of Lisa Ide’s signed receipt, so she waited while Yves duplicated the other two forms on a printer hooked up to his computer.
She looked at the copies after he handed them to her. Chan’s name and the same table number were at the top of each copy, along with the printed date and time. And there were the signatures of the women who’d dined with the dead: Abby Koop and Janet Hofer.
