bolt.
Or had he stepped out into the hall first?
Claire couldn’t remember and soon gave up trying to reconstruct in her mind the sequence of their departure.
It didn’t matter. There was the muffin, his gift, his thoughtfulness.
There was his love for her.
The direct flight to Chicago had taken a little less than three hours. The carry-on strap was digging into Jubal’s shoulder with every step as he strode toward the point beyond security where people waited to greet incoming passengers. It hadn’t been an easy flight. An infant two seats in front of his had begun wailing during takeoff and only stopped occasionally to catch its breath so it could maintain volume. Concentrating on As Thy Love Thyself was impossible, so Jubal had put the script back in his carry-on and, despite the din, had dozed on the plane and was still slightly groggy.
He became more alert when he saw a slight, shapely woman leaning casually against a post with her arms crossed. Her posture was one of easy grace, one leg slightly bent at the knee so her pointed toe retained balance, her body elegantly curved. A dancer’s line. She was wearing tight blue slacks and an untucked white T-shirt snug over small, pointed breasts. Her blond hair was styled close to her head in a boy cut to emphasize her gamine features.
Dalia Hart.
She spotted Jubal and came alive with a glow. Grinning widely, she pushed away from the post she’d been leaning on and ran to greet him.
He let the carry-on drop to the floor and gathered her close in his arms.
She nuzzled the base of his neck, flicking with her tongue. “Glad to see me?”
“Understatement,” he said.
“I know,” she said through her smile. “I can feel it.”
He kissed her hello as fervently as he’d kissed Claire good-bye only hours ago in New York.
53
Rain had begun to fall, or rather hang in the air, a heavy mist that made umbrellas useless and found its way beneath exposed cuffs and down the backs of collars. At least the heat had broken, Quinn thought as he struggled out of a cab and stepped into a puddle, which made his right sock wet.
A woman wearing rubber boots sloshed through the water and claimed his place in the back of the cab even before he had a chance to shut the door. He barely got out of the way and avoided being splashed as the vehicle rejoined start-and-stop traffic on Park Avenue.
While Pearl and Fedderman were continuing their interviews with interior decorators who’d been employed by Night Prowler victims, Quinn had cabbed here to meet Harley Renz at a psychiatrist’s office. Renz had requested the meeting but hadn’t told Quinn the reason for it. As he crossed the wide street toward the sedate, prewar building, Quinn thought it was way past time for Renz to find his way to a psychiatrist’s office.
The lobby was gold-veined gray marble and soft oak paneling, understated and elegant. It was unattended. Quinn paused on a large rubber mat and stamped water from his shoes, noticing a security camera mounted in a corner and aimed his way. He found a directory near the elevators and quickly located his destination.
The office, on the ninth floor, was at the end of a wide hall. Its door was open about six inches in coy and silent invitation.
He pushed the door open all the way and stepped inside. Something about the subtle, chemical scent of the place alerted him. Then he noticed smudges on various objects, like someone had gone through with a greasy feather duster, from when prints had been lifted. Now he recognized the scent; more obscure prints had been made visible with the Super Glue method.
Crime scene.
Quinn was in a receptionist’s outer office and waiting room. There was a desk with a computer on it, a bank of tan file cabinets, softly painted earth-tone walls, restful prints of water lilies. Current magazines were spread out on a coffee table before a long beige sofa, a Forbes, a New Yorker, an Architectural Digest. A Mr. Coffee sat on a small table in a corner, a stack of white Styrofoam cups next to it along with packaged cream and sugar. Mr. Coffee’s burner light wasn’t glowing, but the glass pot was half filled.
Quinn saw that a closet door on his left was hanging open. A man’s worn blue windbreaker on a wire hanger was the only garment. There was an X of masking tape on the floor, no doubt to indicate where a body had been stuffed into the narrow closet. The tape was smeared with blood and curled where it lay over a dark stain on the carpeted floor. Quinn noted that the carpet had absorbed a lot of blood, so when the door was closed, it wouldn’t be visible to anyone coming in from the hall. A killer thinking ahead?
He went to another half-opened door alongside the reception desk and used the back of a knuckle, so as not to disturb or leave a print, to push it open all the way. Not necessary, since the scene had obviously been gone over by the crime scene unit and the body removed, but habits formed in the presence of death died harder than some homicide victims.
There was Harley Renz, lying on his back on a brown leather sofa, his legs crossed at the ankles, his fingers laced behind his head. He looked over and smiled when Quinn entered the room. “Welcome to the confessional.”
“Sorry I missed it. I bet you had some doozies.”
“I was too late myself.” Renz motioned lazily to where an outline of a human body had been marked out crudely with tape on the carpet near the desk.
“Was that the Dr. Rita Maxwell whose name was on the building directory,” Quinn asked, “or was she the one in the closet?”
“This one was Dr. Maxwell.” Renz sat up but remained slumped and relaxed on a corner of the comfortable- looking sofa. “The vic in the outer-office closet was her receptionist, one Hannah Best. This Dr. Maxwell”-he pointed to a wall displaying photographs and framed diplomas and certificates-“was some impressive babe.”
“I read about the case in the papers,” Quinn said. “The doctor and her assistant were stabbed to death. The pattern didn’t fit the Night Prowler, so I didn’t pay too much attention.”
“I don’t think it fits, either,” Renz said, “but I thought you might wanna take a look at the scene. You never know what might trigger an errant thought, wandered somehow into an infertile brain.”
“True enough. Any leads?”
“One. Like I said, there’s probably no connection, but sometimes New York can be a small town. Both these women were stabbed only a few times each, as if more to send them on their way without a lot of time, trouble, or passion than for any sadistic enjoyment. Not like what your guy does to them. Still, we got women stabbed to death here. The media’s taken note. And a Park Avenue analyst murdered in her office-lots of people will be disturbed by that.”
“You mean people who were disturbed to begin with and had motive and opportunity to kill Dr. Maxwell.”
“Among others. Just think of all the secrets passed in confidence in this quiet, restful room.” Renz grinned. “But we know there’s really no such thing as secrets in confidence.”
“They exist,” Quinn said, “but briefly.”
“Like true love.”
“I noticed a security camera in the lobby. Did it show anything?”
“You mean like a shot of the killer on his way in or out? No. It had recycled and was on its next loop by the time we knew it was there. Everybody coming or going on the tape was here well after the murders.”
“What about the doctor’s files?”
“They don’t appear to have been disturbed. It seems the killer entered the outer office, killed ‘Hard Luck Hannah’ the receptionist, and hid her body in the closet. Then he came in here and did the doctor.”
“Maybe a patient thought twice after revealing something during analysis and wanted to take it back.”
“Always that possibility, with a victim like this.”
