Obviously, Richard had put it there while she was asleep.
She felt a deep dread. Why had he done such a thing? What the hell was it about? Some kind of kinky sex? Water sports? S amp;M? If it was that kind of stuff, Terri wasn’t into it.
After last night and what had happened between them, was it going to turn into something dirty and violent? The thought of it made her stomach knot up with disappointment.
She shook her head. Dating in New York…
Then she felt a sudden flare of hope. The super! Jennison the building superintendent must have installed the hook yesterday, or even sometime over the past week, and she simply hadn’t noticed it. That was it. Had to be. She’d been looking at the dark side again, jumping to disastrous conclusions. Her Camelot was safe.
When she got out of the shower, she’d mention the hook to Richard. He might even know what it was for.
38
Renz loved this kind of thing, a setting where he was in control.
He had them all in his office, Quinn, Pearl, Fedderman, and the team of Sal Vitali and Harold Mishner.
The office was hot because of the way sunlight was pouring in between the blind slats. Quinn knew the blinds would remain open because the deluge of morning brilliance was at Renz’s back, putting his visitors at a disadvantage. Renz tended to play every card in his hand. Quinn also noticed the faint smell in the dust-mote-filled air: Renz had been secretly smoking cigars in his office again. If the mayor knew that, there’d soon be a new police commissioner.
Vitali and Mishner were reasonably friendly toward Quinn and his team, but Quinn could tell they didn’t like the single-killer theory any more than…well, anyone liked it, other than Renz. And Renz liked it because it was politically expedient.
Still, Quinn had to admit it was possible that one serial killer in the city had, for whatever reason, committed two series of murders in different ways in order to forge, or satisfy, two separate identities.
Strategically silhouetted at his desk, Renz held up a folder. “This is more info on the Twenty-five-Caliber Killer’s latest victim, Floyd Becker. He was wealthy from his construction company, Becker Synergies.”
“Never heard of it,” Quinn said.
“They aren’t big in New York,” the silhouette said. “They apparently built a lot of dams and such in South America. Anyway, he was well off, if not a Rockefeller.”
“Liked to hunt, I’ll bet,” Quinn said.
“You got that right.” If the silhouette was irritated by Quinn’s remark, it didn’t show it. “We still need to find out why he checked in at the Antonian under a phony name, and why he went out without carrying any identification.” The silhouette laid the file on the desk and made a show of idly leafing through it. “No surprise to any of us that death was caused by a single twenty-five-caliber slug fired by the same make firearm-one we can’t yet identify-but definitely not by the same gun.”
“Maybe some make of target pistol with a changeable barrel,” Vitali suggested.
“No,” the silhouette said, “we checked that out. The firing pin strikes are slightly different. And you and Mishkin need to be focusing more on the Vera Doaks and Hettie Davis murders.”
“If it’s the same killer-”
“Call it a logical division of labor,” said the silhouette. “Back to the facts: Becker was shot inside the hotel, in a corridor running the length of the building and with a door leading to the passageway outside. A spot of blood on the carpet tested out to be his. For some reason, after shooting Becker, the killer then dragged the body outside into the passageway and dumped it behind a pile of trash bags. The crime scene inside the hotel offered up little evidence other than the blood. The CSU team searched and vacuumed the surrounding carpet, came up with dirt and three human hairs. None of the hairs matches Becker’s. One or more of them might be from the head of the killer. We’ll know that when we nail the bastard.” The silhouette turned its head toward Quinn. Strongly backlighted as it was, its hair looked like a hopeless tangle of wire. “The hotel staff have anything for us?”
“No,” Quinn said. “We’ll talk to them again today.”
“Do that, and interview Becker’s wife. She’s been told about his murder, but was too shaken up to talk last night.”
Quinn nodded and pretended to write something in his notepad.
“You two,” said the silhouette to Vitali and Mishkin, “keep hard at the Slicer killings and report anything pertinent to Quinn. Have you got anything on the Vera Doaks murder?”
“She’s still dead,” Vitali said.
Here was a man, Quinn thought, without much of a future in the NYPD. But he was feeling a growing fondness for Vitali.
“If you’re contacted by any of the media,” said the silhouette, unfazed by sarcasm, “don’t talk to them. I mean that. Tell them zilch.”
“Even Cindy Sellers?” Fedderman asked.
The silhouette stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if this was more sarcasm. “Especially Sellers. I’ll be the one to decide what she does or doesn’t know, and when she knows it.”
“Or doesn’t,” Quinn heard Pearl say beneath her breath. He hoped this meeting would end before she decided to jump in with Vitali and Fedderman and gang up on Renz. She could be captive to pack mentality.
The silhouette stood up and walked out from behind the desk, passing into the light and becoming Renz. “That’s it for now,” he said. “I’ve gotta meet soon with one of the mayor’s aides. Keep the information flowing to me and to each other.”
The five detectives assured Renz that they would and he politely, but hurriedly, ushered them from his office.
Outside the building, in the glare of the already hot morning, Vitali put on a pair of fashionably tiny sunglasses and said, “Have you ever heard such bullshit?”
“Oh, sure,” Quinn said. “But call me if you do have something on our murderous multitasker.”
“I’ll let you know if we apprehend either of his personalities,” Vitali said.
He and Mishkin got into their unmarked, which was a later model than Quinn and his team had arrived in, and drove away. Mishkin smiled and gave them a slight wave through the passenger-side window.
“Vitali is obviously the wiseass of the two,” Pearl said.
“I know Mishkin,” Fedderman said. “He’s almost mute and might faint at the sight of blood, but don’t sell him short, even in a down market.”
Pearl said, “Is the trail leading us to Wall Street?”
“Drive me back to the office and my car,” Quinn said, “then Feds can take the unmarked and interview the hotel employees again. You and I, Pearl, will talk to Becker’s widow.”
Nerves were frayed, after the meeting with Renz. It was best to split these two up.
Quinn and Pearl’s conversation with Floyd Becker’s widow, a hefty, brunette with a bright pink face, yielded little of value other than to confirm that Becker was, like earlier. 25-Caliber Killer victims, an avid hunter.
“He even has a lion,” the widow had said. “Or what’s left of one. It’s down in basement storage someplace. For years we used it as a rug, complete with the head.”
Pearl thought about that as she and Quinn drove through noontime Manhattan traffic toward the Antonian Hotel to join forces with Fedderman. She didn’t know people still used animal skins for rugs. Wouldn’t that prompt some kind of social outrage? It should, Pearl thought. In fact she felt quite vehement about it. She glanced down at her leather shoes, felt slightly foolish, then promptly righted herself and maintained her indignation. People needed shoes, damn it! They didn’t need rugs. Especially rugs with heads on them.
“Wanna stop for some lunch?” Quinn asked.
“No. Not hungry.”
Quinn glanced over at her as he drove. “You okay, Pearl?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she snapped.
