Now she was going to walk down to that deli on the corner and get heated-up garbage for supper. She’d feel sorry for herself and then go to bed early and pissed off. That was Pearl. He knew her. She’d be hard on herself and make herself miserable.
Her own fault.
Why should I care?
He realized he shouldn’t and drove away.
Screw and take notes. He had to laugh.
Quinn dropped back by the office to see what Fedderman had come up with in trying to find some correlation between the Slicer murders and the. 25-Caliber Killer victims. Fedderman had left a report of his day’s work, with and without Vitali and Mishkin, on Quinn’s desk.
After sitting down behind his desk, Quinn fired up a Cuban cigar and leaned back. No matter what he’d do to eliminate or disguise the tobacco scent, Pearl would notice it tomorrow morning and bring it to his attention. He wouldn’t tell her his conversation with her in the car was what made him want to smoke a cigar and relax, get his nervous system back together. That might give her some satisfaction. He blew smoke and smiled. Pearl.
Halfway through his cigar, Quinn finished reading Fedderman’s report. He wasn’t surprised to learn that Feds hadn’t found a thing connecting the murders. Neither had Vitali or Mishkin. Quinn knew these were three people good at their jobs. If they couldn’t see any parallel, maybe there wasn’t any. It seemed the more they looked for one, the further away they got from Renz’s very political reasoning that there was only one killer committing both series of murders.
Of course, Renz might be a political animal, but he wasn’t a bad detective, and he still had his cop’s instincts, even if they weren’t as honed as before he’d become commissioner. Then there was Helen. She didn’t think it was impossible that both impulses, both MOs, could exist in the same person, the same twisted and compartmentalized mind.
Don’t we all compartmentalize? Isn’t that what keeps us sane? Or makes us part of the majority insanity that passes for normal?
Quinn drew on his cigar, rolled the illegal smoke around in his mouth, then exhaled. He set the report aside.
By way of twisted minds…
He booted up his computer and keyed in Dr. Alfred Beeker’s Web site.
There was no mention of Beeker being a doctor there, and he didn’t appear, unless he was one of the men wearing leather masks. There was lots of S amp;M literature, some of it amateurish and full of bad grammar. Then there were the photographs. Women in various poses of restraint, some of them not poses. Leather restraints, chains, elaborately knotted ropes. The women were mostly in their twenties and thirties, but some appeared younger. Probably they weren’t younger. Beeker was smart enough not to have shots of minors on his Web site.
Quinn clicked from one photo spread to another, scanning the thumbnails.
And there was Zoe, just as Beeker had said.
The poses were mild, without leather, chains, or whips. More like the sort of thing you’d see in Playboy. A younger Zoe who looked amazingly like the fifties pinup Bettie Page, mostly because of her similar hairdo. Zoe in a bikini, making a perfect O with her lips and pretending to be shocked and afraid. Zoe with her breasts exposed, smiling seductively and hugging a pink sheet to her lower body. Zoe seated nude in a wicker rocking chair, pretending to knit. Zoe wearing nothing but high-heeled shoes and bending gracefully to touch her toes. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe…
Quinn realized he had an erection. That bastard Beeker. What if his patients knew about his kinky other self? Or maybe they did. Maybe because of his predilection for kinky sex he crossed the line with his patients. Maybe those were his patients in his photographs.
Maybe they’re his patients. Jesus!
Quinn’s cigar, propped in the ashtray, had gone out. He relit it and shut down the computer.
He sat smoking for a while, thinking as he stared into the haze of his exhalations, as if the smoke were made up of his musings and might reveal some meaning.
He wanted to see Zoe and knew that if he called her she could be talked into inviting him to her apartment. But he didn’t want Beeker to be a part of their relationship in any way. Better if he waited a while, until the photos he’d just seen had faded in his memory.
He could wait for a while to see Zoe again. Certainly until dinner.
Later on, he’d see Beeker.
62
As soon as Lavern carefully and quietly closed the door behind her, she heard her husband’s voice: “You’re late and you’re drunk.”
“I was with Bess.” The first person Lavern could think of who’d back her up. “We sat in the restaurant after dinner and talked, and time flew.”
“You were drinking.”
She knew there was no way he could know for sure if she was drunk, as she’d just come in and the living room light hadn’t even been turned on. She was facing absolute blackness and could only be a dark silhouette against the dim light of the hall. Hobbs was completely invisible in the dark. “We had wine for dinner, then a few drinks afterward. That’s all.”
She didn’t tell him she’d skipped dinner and drunk alone, and then with a man in a lounge far from the neighborhood where she might have been recognized and word might get back to Hobbs. Nothing had happened between her and the man (Victor something, she thought, but maybe not
…), and in fact both had been too drunk to do anything about it if they’d felt any real sexual attraction. They’d been asked to leave and objected mildly, then were actually hurried and pushed from the place by a burly bartender.
Victor (or whoever) had thrown a punch at the bartender that was so ineffective it had been ignored, and there they were out on the sidewalk, barely able to stand.
Lavern had leaned back against a streetlight, closed her eyes, and almost passed out. Or maybe she had briefly lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes, Victor was gone. A man who might have been Victor was crossing the street at the intersection half a block down.
Too far away for her to catch up with him. All that effort…
Well, the hell with Victor.
So Lavern had walked, too, in the opposite direction, weaving noticeably at first and attracting attention. People slowed when they saw her approaching and veered out of her path. They seemed to be ashamed of her, embarrassed for her.
Screw you! All of you!
A woman in a gray business suit gave her a disdainful glance. A teenage boy with baggy pants low on his pelvis kept a hold on his fly and grinned at her as he bopped past. Fellow clowns and rebels.
After a few blocks she began to sober up; she could feel it.
On the cab ride home she’d impressed the driver with her terse and logical conversation about everything from politics to professional basketball. Pretty damned good! She was sure she’d reached the point where it wouldn’t be obvious that she’d been drinking.
She’d been wrong. Hobbs must have smelled liquor on her breath, maybe on her clothes.
“Shut the goddamned door all the way and come in here,” he said.
She obeyed, and at the click of the door latch the lights winked on in the living room, temporarily blinding her.
She gasped. Hobbs was standing ten inches from her and had flipped the wall switch.
