anonymous gifts just to throw a scare into them as a joke.”
“Some joke,” Pearl said. “Really fucks us up.”
“We’ll look over the Briggs apartment, give Claire some instructions, then put a nighttime stakeout on her building starting tonight. We’ll work in shifts so we can all get at least some sleep.”
“We’ll be doing nothing but waiting for Egan to drop the hammer on us,” Fedderman said.
Quinn thought he might be right, but he didn’t see that they had any choice. And in truth, he didn’t so much mind concentrating their efforts on Claire Briggs. Something was going to break soon; he knew it in his mind and his gut. Almost thirty years as a cop told him something was going to break. And Claire Briggs might be the reason. Maybe Fedderman was right about her being an actress and able to take them in, but Quinn was sure one thing about Claire wasn’t an act. She was genuinely terrified.
So, they’d establish their stakeout and wait and wait. And maybe Quinn’s gut would be right again.
And if it wasn’t…
Quinn didn’t have much time to agonize over the possibility.
Pearl fell asleep holding a Styrofoam cup half filled with cold coffee. She was behind the steering wheel of the parked unmarked down the block from Claire Briggs’s apartment building. The car’s windows were down and the damp, close night had permeated the interior and left a film of condensation over glass and metal. That and the bitter aftertaste of too much coffee had put Pearl in a lousy mood.
She awoke with a start and a curse as she realized the cup had tilted and coffee spilled onto her thigh. The sudden action caused her to drop the now-empty cup to the floor between her feet.
Stakeouts. She’d always disliked them. She licked her lips. They felt gummy. She was glad she couldn’t smell her own breath. Stakeouts.
The Briggs apartment was a high corner unit, and Pearl had a fix on its windows. Claire had left the street- side blinds open as instructed. If a light came on in the kitchen or anywhere else, even a faint one, Pearl should be able to see it. Late as it was, the windows in all but four of the other apartments were dark. Pearl glanced at her watch-three-seventeen.
She felt some relief; she’d dozed off only about ten minutes ago.
Not that anything figured to happen. Claire Briggs’s story was only slightly more credible than those of so many other callers who’d contacted the police lately. It was odd how a killer like this affected a certain kind of woman. Loneliness probably made some of them pick up the phone and tell someone on the other end of the line anything that would create interest, draw attention. Loneliness was such a powerful driver of single women.
It’s as if we-
Pearl sat up straighter as she saw one of the building’s street doors open and a man emerge. He paused and looked around, then adjusted his cap, pulling it low as if a wind might blow it off, though the night was calm.
She watched the darkly dressed man walk along the deserted sidewalk, in the opposite direction from where she was parked. Probably, she told herself, he was a tenant. Or a late-night poker player. An insomniac out for a stroll. A guy who worked odd hours, though that didn’t seem likely.
Yet here she was working odd hours.
It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him, listen to his story. She wasn’t here just to sit in the muggy night without moving, like a human mushroom.
Anyway, there was something about the way the man was walking, with a deliberate casualness, his shoulders slightly hunched, now and then glancing off to one side or the other.
Pearl realized she was feeling more and more that the man was acting as if he might have something to hide, slinking along in his dark pants and shirt and wearing what looked like a blue or black baseball cap pulled so low on his forehead.
Slinking?
Yeah, slinking.
When he was almost to the corner, she started the engine.
But when she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, something was wrong. There was back pressure. The car lurched forward and the right front tire dug into the curb, causing the steering wheel to come alive and jerk from her grip violently enough to bend back her thumb.
The engine died.
Pearl contorted her body to reach down low. Her fingers closed on the Styrofoam coffee cup that had dropped to the floor and gotten wedged beneath the accelerator pedal.
Disgusted, she flung the empty cup aside and got the car started again. The front wheel jumped the curb, then bounced back into the gutter, and she pulled out into the street.
But by the time she’d driven to the intersection, the dark man was nowhere in sight.
She worked her aching thumb back and forth a few times to make sure it would be okay, then stepped down hard on the accelerator and did a fast turn around the block.
Still no sign of the man.
Pearl slowed the car and used her cell phone to call and wake Claire.
She hoped.
63
Pearl knew there was a phone on the nightstand beside Claire’s bed. Unless she had the ringer turned off, it had to be jangling almost in her ear.
It rang four times before it was picked up.
“Claire?” Pearl asked.
“Who is this?” The voice on the other end of the connection was small and afraid.
“Detective Kasner. I don’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about, but I’m coming up to talk to you.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It is. I’ll explain when I get there. When I knock, check through the peephole and I’ll show you my badge. Check everyone who knocks, just like we told you.”
“This sounds creepy. You sure something’s not going on?”
“Yes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
After breaking the connection, Pearl called Quinn on his cell phone.
Their conversation lasted as long as it took Pearl to park in front of Claire’s building.
Using the key Claire had supplied so they wouldn’t have to be buzzed in, Pearl entered the building. She crossed the deserted lobby and pressed the elevator button. The elevator was at lobby level and the door opened within seconds. The man who’d left the building must have ridden it down.
Pearl took the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor. It took longer than she would have liked. She walked fast down the hall to Claire’s apartment and knocked three times.
The light in the peephole dimmed almost immediately and Pearl held up her shield.
Locks snicked, a chain rattled, and the door opened.
Claire had on a blue robe and slippers. Her eyes were puffy and her hair mussed, but she looked wide awake as she stepped aside so Pearl could enter. She also looked scared.
Pearl assessed her. Pretty, even rousted out of bed at three in the morning, but not that pretty. Maybe I could have been a Broadway star.
“What’s going on, Detective Kasner?”
“Call me Pearl. And probably nothing’s going on. I saw a man dressed in dark clothing leave the building a little while ago, and he acted a little furtive. When I tried to catch up with him in the car, he was nowhere in sight. I wanted to check to make sure you were all right.”
“Nothing woke me up until your phone call. And the chain was still on when you knocked.”
“There are lots of ways to refasten a chain lock on the way out. If you don’t mind losing a wire hanger, I could show you.”
Claire’s pretty face turned pale as she realized the significance of what Pearl was saying. “You mean you think he might have been in here while I was asleep?”
