John Lutz - Pulse

Charmain kind of half closed her eyes and regarded him. “I guess sex does change people’s voices. A man like you, in your work, you must meet lots of women…”

Sal knew where this was going and wished Harold was here. And just like that, as if wish were command, Harold walked into the bedroom.

“Did I come through loud and clear?” he asked.

“Loud enough, but not completely clear,” Sal said. He introduced Harold to Charmain.

“Would you like a Kleenex for your nose?” Charmain asked.

Harold thanked her and accepted a tissue from a box by the bed.

“Was I any help?” Charmain asked.

“Sure were,” Harold said.

“I mean, my testimony? Not the vent thing.”

“I thought you meant the tissue.”

“Yes and yes,” Sal said. Charmain had heard the killer celebrating with himself over the recent murder. She had helped to establish the time of death, but Sal saw no point in telling her that. And if the killer had been bouncing around in Macy’s bed, he might have left a good DNA sample. Or maybe he’d done that earlier in the evening, in the park. “You’ve been a big help,” he said. He moved toward the door. Harold and Charmain followed.

At the door to the hall, Charmain winked at Sal in a way that Harold wouldn’t notice. All this talk about murder seemed to have excited her. “If you need anything else, like more experiments with the vent, under more realistic circumstances, just let me know. I’m available.”

Sal just bet. He thanked her politely and formally for her help, then ushered Harold toward the elevator.

“That was nice of her, with the Kleenex,” Harold said on the way down to the lobby.

“It was because you smell like jet fuel,” Sal said.

“It was because she likes me,” Harold said, “and you’re jealous.”

Knowing Harold, Sal said nothing in reply.

T here was something wrong with the air conditioner that caused it to run and not run in long cycles. Or maybe it was just overwhelmed by the heat wave. Right now it was in its not-run phase.

It was unnaturally quiet in the office, as if the warmth were smothering sound. There was a smell like wet paste, maybe from the plastic or wiring in Fedderman’s computer heating up. If there still was any wiring in computers. Everything might be modular now. Sometimes Quinn felt like he was modular and didn’t fit anywhere, a time traveler from the Bronze Age.

Quinn was working the phones. Only the intrepid, ill-clad Fedderman was there with him, at a desk fifteen feet away, facing Quinn’s. Fedderman dressed somewhat better since his recent marriage, but his right shirt cuff still usually managed to come unbuttoned when he wrote with pen or pencil. And it would stay that way, flapping like a signal flag when he walked. He was busy transferring his written notes to a file on the computer. Both copies would be saved, to add to a growing physical as well as electronic file.

The jangle of the phone broke the silence and Quinn picked up. The receiver of the landline phone was hard and slippery against his ear.

The caller was Pearl, checking in from the brownstone. She’d worked late last night, making connections with Macy’s three roommates, who were out of town for the summer. Pearl, bearing the bad news.

Macy’s roommates had been horrified when they learned of her death. Other than that, they didn’t have much to add to the investigation. They were all college students, home for the summer. Two were in Chicago. The third was in Europe. None of them had really known Macy, though all of them cried during their conversations with Pearl. They’d had nothing negative to say about the dead, apparently thinking they might draw down an ancient curse upon themselves if they were anything but complimentary. Pearl had run into that attitude before, when the young were unexpectedly confronted with the death of someone who’d touched their lives.

It could happen to anyone.

Quinn thanked Pearl and asked if she was still in bed.

“Why?” she asked. “Are you interested in phone sex?”

“I didn’t know phones had sex,” Quinn said.

Pearl’s cue to hang up, which she did.

Quinn had read Sal and Harold’s respective reports. So far, the interview with Charmain Graham, Macy’s neighbor in an adjacent apartment, had proved the most fruitful. She might actually have heard the killer in Macy’s bedroom. No one else in the building other than the super seemed to have even met Macy other than to say hello or nod to in the hall. No one had noticed anything suspicious in or near the building during the weeks leading up to her death.

The killer had committed a clean and seamless crime, except for the soft laughter overheard through Charmain Graham’s bedroom vent. That laughter so soon after the process of human slaughter infuriated Quinn. He kept imagining it, even though he’d never heard it. Had the killer laughed that way while butchering the gagged and still-alive Macy? Or while working the blue panties onto her corpse? What the hell was that all about, with the panties?

Quinn picked up a different sheet of paper and scanned it yet again.

What the CSU had removed from Macy’s apartment yielded little of use other than the names and addresses of Macy’s mother and father. Her mother lived in Davenport, Iowa. Her father in Oakland, California.

Quinn figured Pearl had done enough death notification.

He sighed and made the necessary calls. The reactions of both parents made rips in his heart. He thought of his own daughter, on the other side of the continent, in California. People didn’t have children with the notion that they might be tortured and butchered by a monster. Across the office, Fedderman had heard sound but not substance. But he knew what the calls were about and his eyes had teared up. He quickly looked away from Quinn.

Another phone call, incoming, was also less than a pleasure. Nift from the medical examiner’s office, with Macy’s postmortem findings.

“Official cause of our girl’s death was heart failure brought about by extreme shock,” Nift said, getting right down to business.

“No surprise there.”

“Slicing off her tits took a bit of know-how and skill.”

“Medical skill?”

“No. More like practice-makes-almost-perfect skill. They were done antemortem. It’s a wonder she didn’t die of shock early in the process. The killer was expert at keeping her alive as long as possible. He was the one who chose almost the precise instant of death. I would imagine that was important to him.”

“Try not to imagine,” Quinn said. But he knew Nift was right. It simply irritated him that the smarmy little M.E. enjoyed playing detective.

Nift gave a low chuckle that reminded Quinn of Charmain Graham’s description of the killer’s laugh. “Macy’s evening wasn’t all bad,” Nift said. “Stomach contents were steak, salad, red wine, consumed approximately five hours before her death. She was wined and dined and then-”

“Raped?”

“Maybe. Could have been consensual. But damage to the vaginal tract suggests otherwise. And there was residue of the kind of substance used on pre-lubricated condoms.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive. I see it over and over,” Nift said, in an oddly cheerful voice.

“Our killer practicing safe sex,” Quinn said.

“Whatever entered her might not have been a penis.”

“A dildo?”

“Maybe. Or some make-do inanimate object that required lubrication.”

“Or some object ceremonial to the killer.”

“It could be we’re making too much of it,” Nift said. “We can’t rule out simple, consensual sex. She might have been wined, dined, and reclined-and enjoyed that part of it, even though it had to have been rough. There’s some frictional damage to the vaginal wall. But you know women.”