John Lutz: Pulse

It was well past dusk now, but there was a bright moon in a black sky beyond the shadows of the copse of trees where he had lured her. She would be able to see everything she so feared and dreaded.

He held up a boning knife with a long, lean blade streaked with blood. “I thought you’d want to be conscious for this,” he said. “The first one was so much fun.”

Macy began thrashing again with her legs as he slowly and deliberately lowered the knife toward her remaining breast. The fear, the pain, sickened her, made her feel faint. She felt herself sliding again into a fearful darkness, yet she welcomed the black void as an escape from this horror. And she might escape from it, because it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t actually be happening.

Or if it was happening, it was to someone else. In another world, not hers. A world she was dreaming…

None of this is real. Not the pain. Not the fear.

She was drifting, falling…

He pinched her nose again. Her stopped breath caught in her throat and she was fully conscious again, fully aware.

Again.

It was real.

He was real.

The knife was real.

Later, when he was almost finished with her, he removed his pants all the way. He’d previously only unzipped them. He was wearing pale blue panties, which he quickly removed, pausing only to appreciate their silky softness.

He found the victim’s black thong that he’d earlier taken off and tossed to the side, and slipped it on. He then carefully lifted her legs and put the blue panties on her. She wasn’t quite dead, and unconsciously helped him by bending her knees or pointing her toes.

He then put his pants back on, and on top of them baggier, triple-pleated pants he’d brought in his attache case. They were a harsher material, not pleasant to the touch.

Keeping away from the blood, he knelt next to her and whispered, “Are you still here?”

But she didn’t hear him. She was in deep shock and on her way to death. He watched her avidly. Watched her eyes.

Are you still here?

When the moment arrived, he was ready.

The last thing he did before leaving was unfold a page from the morning paper and rest it crease-up over her face, like a tent. It was a Macy’s department store sale ad proclaiming

EVERYTHING S LASHED.

Nobody, he thought, had a sense of humor like God.

Frank Quinn lay sprawled in bed in his brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. He wasn’t quite all the way awake, listening to the slow rhythm of Pearl’s breathing. She was on her side, one bare leg thrown over him, her forehead burrowed into his chest. The morning wasn’t yet hot. The window air conditioner was silent because Quinn had gotten up at 3:30 to relieve his bladder, and the room was cool. Half awake, he’d switched off the laboring window unit as he tottered back to bed.

It was getting warm again, as the sun rose beyond the stone and brick buildings and the struggling trees on West Seventy-fifth Street. The morning noises of the city had begun-a distant clanging of trash containers, a growing rush of traffic punctuated by the rumbling and growling of trucks and buses, a faraway police siren, a brief shouted exchange down on the sidewalk. Quinn felt pretty good, there in the dawn of wakefulness, his flesh pressed to Pearl’s, his city shaking off the night and coming to life around him.

The phone by the bed jangled, making him jump. It was an old landline phone that Quinn had owned for years. He kept it because its jarring ring would rouse him from the soundest sleep. And because… well, it was familiar, well used, and reliable. And it looked like a phone.

Pearl stirred and said, “Time isht?”

“Six-thirtyish,” Quinn said, gazing at the glowing digital clock near the phone. The clock actually read 4:37, but that was so early in the morning that Quinn didn’t feel like being precise.

The phone jangled again. Persistent pest.

“Let it ring,” Pearl said.

“We’re cops,” Quinn said. “We don’t let phones ring. We answer them.”

“We’re private cops.”

“That’s no different,” Quinn said, as he stretched out an arm and lifted the heavy receiver from its cradle.

Pearl muttered something he didn’t understand, but it sounded snarky.

“Quinn,” he said into the cool, hard plastic jammed against the side of his face.

“I know it is. I’m the guy who called you.”

Harley Renz. Exactly the last person Quinn wanted to talk to.

Renz was New York City’s police commissioner, and he didn’t intend to retire from that office. He had bigger plans. He and Quinn had been adversaries for the same positions within the NYPD years ago. Quinn had stayed honest and away from office jobs and unnecessary contact with the higher-ups in the department. Renz was enthusiastically corrupt and ambitious, an unabashed schmoozer and climber. His every move was designed to edge him upward or forward. Quinn was sure he hadn’t called to say howdy.

He was right.

“Wanna see a dead body?” Renz asked.

Quinn couldn’t help glancing down at the nude Pearl, who was awake now and listening to his end of the conversation.

He took a couple of deep breaths to make sure he was all the way awake. “A homicide victim, I presume.”

“When you see it you’ll know it’s not just a presumption. I’m looking at it right now.”

“A woman?”

“Was.”

“You know I’ve seen dead women before,” Quinn said, “so there must be something special about this one.”

“Oh, there is. Come over here and you’ll see why. You’ll also see why the city is going to hire you and your agency.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Quinn had done work for hire for the city. Renz, the most popular police commissioner in New York’s history, could arrange that with no trouble. He had before. The sleazeball did know how to work the levers of power.

And he knew not to work them too often, so this murder must be special.

“You think the killer’s going to be a repeater?” Quinn asked. That was why he often became employed by the city even though he was out of the NYPD. He’d gained a reputation as a unique talent when it came to tracking serial killers. And of course Quinn and Associates, or Q amp;A, had solved other politically sensitive homicides. In a city as large as New York, there was little downtime between investigations.

“I think we’ve got a serial killer operating in this town,” Renz said. “We both know that’s usually why I call you. But this time there’s something more to it than that.”

“Where are you?” Quinn asked.

“In Central Park, but not very far in. Where Seventy-second Street runs into it, but a little north. Walk up Central Park West and look into the park, over the low stone wall. Where there’s this clump of trees, you’ll see some police cars and a lot of yellow crime scene tape. You can’t miss us.”

“It’s still dark out, Harley. And don’t tell me you’ve got lights. The city’s been doing nighttime work in the park. I’m just as likely to be walking toward a midnight-shift maintenance crew.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you right outside the Beymore Arms, opposite the park, and walk you in.”

“So where exactly is the Beymore Arms?”

Renz gave him a Central Park West address. “Look for a gray stone building with a green awning out front. It’s down the block from a coffee shop.”

“Isn’t everything?”

“Yeah. Even dead people beyond the rejuvenating power of lattes.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Bring Pearl. I know she’s there. I can hear her grinding her teeth.”

Renz knew Pearl didn’t like him. Nobody really liked Renz except the citizens, who knew only the Renz facade and not Renz.