John Lutz - Pulse

“It was a woman?”

“Oh, sure. I could see that much, even though there were some branches in the way.”

“She see you?”

“No, I just stood still and watched, and she walked away.”

“What’d she look like?”

“Blond, I think. But it was hard to tell in the light. And there were those branches and the leaves.”

“What was she wearing?” Quinn asked.

“Jeans, I think. I don’t remember up top. Light-colored blouse or something. Thing is, I never saw her face. There wasn’t much light, and she was mostly facing away from me. And the angle I was at, her hair got in the way.”

“How was she built?”

“Looking down at her like I was, it’s hard to say, but I’d make her to be tall average. On the slender side. Had on high heels. I do remember that.”

“Would you describe them as extreme high heels?” Pearl asked.

“You mean like hooker shoes? No, nothing sexy like that. It’s just that I recall high heels. I’m a leg man, I guess.”

“I figured you for one,” Quinn said, to keep him talking. He considered asking Fernandez why, if he was a leg man, he kept staring at Pearl’s breasts.

Pointless question.

“I got the impression,” Fernandez said, “just from her arms and the way she moved, she was older than the vic, like in her forties. The vic was like a kid, almost.” He swallowed and looked grim. “She sure didn’t look like a kid last time I saw her.”

“You’re positive you never got even a glimpse of this woman’s face?” Quinn asked, keeping Fernandez on point.

“No, not the way she was standing.”

“What time was it when you saw her?”

“Around two o’clock. I’d just come back from lunch, and I rested up a little and read the paper, then went across the street to check the toilet bowl in the Kemmerman apartment. There’s no way that could have been the flapper. That’s got nothing to do with-”

“Was Mr. Kemmerman home when you saw this woman?”

“No, he was at work. He’s a teller at a bank. The people on this block, we know each other. They trust me. They know I don’t pry, like some supers. I mind my own business.”

“Too bad,” Quinn said. “If somebody had seen the killer and his victim enter that building and not minded his own business, maybe a life would have been saved.”

“I did hear one thing,” Fernandez said. “My window on that side of the building was open and I heard somebody-maybe one of the cops-say the vic was some kind of designer. A very talented artist. Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. That explains the protractor. It fits right in with the killer’s ghoulish sense of humor, the protracted grin. “We’re still in the early finding-out stage. Know the name of the company where she worked?”

“No, I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t stand there and eavesdrop. I don’t pry.”

“Too bad,” Quinn said.

Fernandez flashed his handsome grin.

Quinn and Pearl exchanged glances, letting each other know that at the moment they had nothing more to ask. They let Fernandez know, too, and thanked him for his time.

“Sorry I couldn’t help,” he told Quinn, as they were going out the door.

“Ah, you never know,” Quinn said.

When they were back out on the hot sidewalk, Pearl said, “What do you make of it?”

“Fernandez might have seen the killer,” Quinn said. “Or he might have made the whole thing up.”

“You see Fernandez as the killer?” Pearl asked, surprised.

“Not likely. A lot of supers pry. He might have been lying about something to cover his ass, but I figure he’s the guy who found the body, and he’s nothing more. I’ll have Sal and Harold check to see if he’s got alibis for the times of the other murders, so we can cross him off our list.”

“Fernandez doesn’t feel like the killer.” Pearl said. “He passes the gut test.”

“Exactly.”

They continued along the sidewalk to the entrance of the building where the murder had taken place. The uniform who’d stood screening visitors was gone, as were the radio cars and CSU van that had been parked in front. The ambulance was nowhere in sight. Ann Spellman was on her way to the morgue, where she’d be the subject of intense scrutiny and expertise by Nift, the nasty little M.E. Nift should have more to tell Quinn soon. Renz was seeing to it that these killings got top priority.

Quinn absently fingered the wrapped illicit Cuban cigar in his shirt pocket, then realized what he was doing and quickly lowered his hand. He’d thought there’d be a chance to be alone for a while and smoke the cigar today, not figuring on Ann Spellman interfering with his plan. He felt like smoking it in the car when they were finished here, but he knew better. Pearl might erupt.

“I’d like to know who that woman at the building’s door was,” Pearl said.

“Or if she was.”

W hen the super let them into Ann Spellman’s apartment, both Quinn and Pearl noticed a door near the end of the hall edge open a few inches and then close. Someone sneaking a peek at death.

Yet when the neighbors were questioned, they usually didn’t want to get involved and had little to say.

Quinn dismissed the super and closed the door behind them. The super seemed to want a look around the dead woman’s apartment, too. It made Quinn wonder if the man had entered and had his look-see earlier. It was odd how anything that had to do with a publicized murder victim held a certain attraction. Ann Spellman was dead and had died the hard way, so the super might have been unable to resist treading sacred carpet and hardwood, touching sacrosanct personal objects the recently deceased had touched.

The aftermath of violent death still resonated in the apartment, as if the tenant were sadly lingering and hesitant to leave. Quinn and Pearl each knew the other could feel it, and said nothing. The air was heavy and the only sounds were from traffic outside the building.

They set about carefully looking over the apartment, not hurrying but not wasting motion. Pros who knew their job.

They found no computer, but there was a Lexmark printer on a small table by the desk. On the desk pad was what looked like an indentation where a laptop might have regularly sat when it wasn’t traveling.

The contents of the desk did reveal that Ann Spellman had run up a sixteen-hundred-dollar Visa card balance, and that she worked for Clinton Industrial Designs, on East Fifty-fourth Street near Second Avenue.

With that information, and some personal notes and letters, they learned that she’d recently been fired, and gathered that she’d been having an affair with her boss, one Louis Gainer.

Damn him! Damn him! Damn him! was scribbled in pen on the top sheet of a Post-it pad. Quinn thought it was a good bet that the object of the scribbling was Louis Gainer, and the affair was over. The split had probably happened recently, since the note hadn’t been disposed of when a better use arose for the pad.

The apartment’s kitchen was neat and clean except for an empty carry-out pizza box stuffed into a wastebasket surrounded by a scattering of crumbs on the tile floor. The spotlessly clean oven and meager contents of the refrigerator suggested that Ann Spellman had eaten out often, or had food delivered. A hardworking career woman. Until last night.

Nothing unusual in the medicine cabinet. Tylenol, a bent tube of toothpaste, dental floss, a bottle of antibiotic tablets with an expired date, mint mouthwash. On a top shelf were some morning-after pills. Cautious Ann Spellman. Not cautious enough. The pills that prevented life couldn’t prevent death.

The closet revealed a female mid-level executive’s wardrobe: slacks and blazers, modest blouses, and at least half a dozen pairs of high-heeled shoes. Black was the predominate color. There was the expected basic black dress, with flimsy straps and a neckline low enough that the garment kept slipping from its wire hanger whenever Quinn touched it.