John Lutz - Pulse

Weaver was sure of that. She also knew it would be a bad idea to refuse the commissioner’s request. Renz would slit his grandmother’s throat if it might help him in his relentless bureaucratic climb. No, it was a political climb now. Even better, if Weaver stayed on Renz’s good side. Especially if she learned something about him that made him vulnerable.

If she had something on him that made him have to trust her, she knew it could go one of two ways: her future would be secured, or he would destroy her so she’d no longer be a potential danger to him.

It was a rough game she was playing.

“I understand the necessity for confidentiality, sir. You can trust me.”

“I know I can, Weaver, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Their gazes locked and something passed between them, an unspoken understanding between takers but not givers. The only two types of humans on this earth. Or at least in the city of New York.

Renz made a tent of his pudgy fingers and said nothing more, so Weaver stood up to leave.

“Do what you have to do,” he said behind her.

She nodded.

Story of my life.

Concrete walls bearing indecipherable graffiti, steep grades overgrown with weeds, cars moving along on trackside roadways, all flashed past the window wherein the killer could see his somber reflection.

He was on the train back into New York City from Stamford, Connecticut. It was only a forty-five-minute commute, and it had taken less than an hour to visit a hardware store in Stamford where duplicate keys were made.

He’d had to do this. There was no certitude. Linda Brooks might at any time remove her spare door key from beneath the welcome mat outside her apartment door and change her locks. If she was seeing an analyst, she might well receive that very sound advice.

He’d explained to the girl behind the hardware counter that he had to leave the original key with his wife so she could come and go in his absence, but he’d made a wax impression of their house key. Could she duplicate it?

Of course she could, but it would cost more than a simple reproduction.

He gladly paid the extra charge.

While the key was being made, he browsed around the store and bought a kit for hanging pictures. Let the girl working the key machine, who also had checked him out, draw her own conclusions about him and his fictitious wife moving or redecorating.

He was soon out of the hardware store and on his way back to the train station, a copy of Linda Brooks’s door key in a small envelope deep in his pocket.

He knew that having the key, feeling its warm, light weight and presence against his thigh, hastened the date when it would be used for the last time.

The train slowed and took on passengers at one of its stops along the way. Then it picked up speed again and rocketed along the rails toward the city and Linda Brooks and her destiny.

U sually Linda Brooks wandered, walking the streets as if she might stumble across some answer there.

The killer sometimes thought her meanderings matched the random madness of her mind. It made her more interesting to follow. His projections of where she was headed were usually wrong, not from any fault of his own, but because her mind was a fickle navigator.

But today was different. Linda was walking faster and in straight lines, her chin thrust forward. Today she conveyed an obvious sense of purpose that was almost caricature.

The killer easily followed her without being seen. She didn’t glance behind her once, as she usually did. Her focus was forward.

She crossed Amsterdam and strode north on Columbus, headed for the Upper West Side. The killer almost had to struggle to keep up.

When they reached West Seventy-ninth Street he realized where she was going. He hung back and watched her pause, and then enter the redbrick and stone building that housed Quinn and Associates Investigations.

Quinn heard the street door, then the office door, and watched from behind his desk as the woman entered. She had long dark hair, and was medium height and slender. Standing framed in the doorway as she was, in her tight jeans and yellow T-shirt, he couldn’t help but notice she was buxom. The T-shirt was lettered MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS across the chest.

Once Quinn got beyond her general description and focused on details, he was struck by the haunted quality of her dark eyes. The pale flesh of her face was taut over good bones. She was youthful yet haggard, as if she’d just gotten over a serious illness. Quinn could almost smell fear emanating from her.

“This is the investigative agency?” she said.

He smiled. “You’re in the right place.”

“Whew! Haven’t been there for a while.” She gave him a narrow look. “You should be Captain Frank Quinn.”

“I am. Not a captain any longer, though.”

“Wow. Right place, right person.” She advanced closer to his desk and he motioned toward a chair. Something told him he shouldn’t stand up and loom over her. She might take flight like an exotic bird.

She rolled the chair closer to the desk and sat down, assuming a prim posture. Nearer to him now, the fear in her was even more evident. As was a sadness.

“First of all,” she said, “let’s get it on the table that I’m crazy, but not all the time.”

“Noted,” Quinn said.

She waved her slender arms. “Schizophrenic is the diagnosis. Voices, hallucinations, the whole bag of agony.”

“We can work around that,” Quinn said.

She grinned. “You sound like my analyst.”

He was glad to hear she was in treatment.

“My name is Linda Brooks,” she said, “and I’m being followed.” She leaned slightly forward as if to give the words more impact. “Not just today, right now, but for about a week. It’s like I have a shadow, only it’s not a shadow. A shadow doesn’t keep its distance. Or disappear suddenly even though no light has been switched on. No shadow I’ve seen, anyway.”

“Okay, Linda. Have you gotten a good look at him?”

“How did you know it was a him?”

“I surmised. I do that a lot.”

“Yeah, you would. He’s about five ten or so, thin and fit looking. He wears a blue and gray sweat suit some of the time. Other times jeans and joggers. Some of the time a suit and tie. If I saw him in a photograph, I’d probably recognize him.”

Quinn raised a forefinger, motioning for her to wait a moment, then rummaged through one of his desk drawers. He drew out a copy of an old photo of Daniel Danielle from a Miami Herald news item and laid it on the desk.

Linda edged closer and peered at it. “That’s him.”

Quinn got another photo, this one a shot of Jerry Lido taken for Q amp;A files.

“I told you, that’s him,” Linda said, glancing at the photo.

“Okay,” Quinn said. The two men weren’t completely dissimilar. They were about the same size and each had dark hair. Daniel was wearing what looked like a prison shirt, the booze-emaciated Lido a blue shirt with a loosened tie.

“They’re not the same man,” Quinn pointed out.

“I know that. But they could be at different times.”

It took Quinn a few seconds to understand what she meant. “You mean following you at different times?”

“Of course. I’m not stupid. I don’t think they change identities, just that the same man can look different in different photographs. I mean, I’m not crazy all the time.”

“You said that.” He suspected it was her mantra.

“Now you sound like my analyst.”

Time to get off this track. “I won’t be analyzing you, just helping if I can. By the way, who is your analyst?”

Without hesitating, she gave him the name and address of a psychoanalyst he’d never heard of but who had a respectable address.