John Lutz - Pulse

“The hospital waiting room this morning,” the woman said, seeing that Jody was searching her memory. “We weren’t introduced. I’m Iva Dunn, Mildred Dash’s niece.”

“Jody Jason.”

“I know who you are,” Iva Dunn said. “And I know of your concern about Mildred losing her apartment.”

“I thought she had a legal right to live there. Or at least to slow down the process of eviction so she had some kind of leverage.”

“She did slow it down,” Iva said, with a glance at open space where the apartment building had stood.

“But not enough.” Jody pointed. “Look at them, like voracious monsters eating up the past and the future.”

“I just see machinery,” Iva said.

Jody shook her head. “I see defeat.”

“I thought you might. That’s why when I saw you I came over here. Not just to thank you for your efforts, but because you really should believe that Mildred won her battle.”

Jody looked at her, confused. Iva Dunn seemed serious. Joseph Coil was so right about the truth being complicated. “How so?” she asked. “The building is gone, along with her apartment. Let’s face it; the developer got lucky and Mildred died instead of hanging on for weeks or months. It no longer remains necessary to physically remove her from where she lived for over twenty years, or to stop the demolition.”

Iva gave her that knowing smile again. “It was never Mildred’s intention to actually stop the demolition. Or even to delay it all that much.”

“I understand that. But still and all…”

“Mildred knew she’d be gone within weeks. If she had to die soon, she wanted to die here. And she got her wish. Believe me, Jody, she won.”

Jody looked again at the yellow dozers scooping up the debris of a life, of so many lives, claimed not by corporate progress but by time. Simple and inexorable time.

“We all fight different battles, Jody. We tell different lies and we know different truths.”

Jody thought Iva Dunn sounded a lot like Joseph Coil.

“If that’s how Mildred saw it, then I guess it’s her victory at that,” she said, turning around.

But Iva Dunn was gone.

Jody stayed for a while and watched the demolition.

Malleability.

Quinn sat at his Q and A desk and wondered. What was the secret, or secrets, connecting Waycliffe College, Enders and Coil, and the series of young women’s deaths? Victims who sometimes bore striking resemblances to Pearl.

If he was a copycat killer, this murderer had done his homework. Macy Collins, interning at Enders and Coil, might have learned something she shouldn’t have, and paid with her life. The method of that madness was eerily like that of Daniel Danielle. Perhaps Macy had triggered the other murders, reenergized the bloodlust. Possibly this killer was the real Daniel Danielle, and not a copycat.

It was unlikely, though, that Daniel had survived the hurricane-spawned tornadoes of central Florida.

Most likely his was among the many unrecovered bodies after the deadly hurricane, and the copycat had known the police would at least have to investigate with Daniel Danielle in mind.

Quinn couldn’t keep his mind from picking at the subject.

How might Jody fit in? After all, she was a student at Waycliffe.

No doubt she’d asked herself the same question.

What’s the thread connecting a victim of Daniel Danielle’s-or a copycat’s-to Enders and Coil, and to Waycliffe College? Quinn’s mood became grim. And possibly to Pearl’s daughter, Jody?

The phone jangled so abruptly it made his body jerk.

There’s such a thing as concentrating too hard.

He reached for the receiver and pressed it to his ear, at the same time glancing at caller ID.

“Whaddya know, Jerry?” he asked Lido.

“Something you should,” Lido said. “I was on my computer, giving my browser a workout, when it came up with something interesting. A couple of kids trying to camp out illegally and build a fire pit dug it up.”

“Fire pit?”

“Yeah. They dig down a couple of feet so they can build a fire slightly below ground level and it won’t be spotted from a distance.”

“Smart.”

“Not this time. They happened to be on top of a shallow grave and dug up a body.”

Quinn had been leaning back in his chair. He let it tilt forward. “When did this happen?”

“Last night. Kids had their cell phones handy and called it in right away. Creeped the hell out of them. That was the end of the camping trip.”

“Body identified?”

“Not yet. Woman probably in her twenties, average size, what look like knife nicks on some bones, like she was tortured with a blade. Body bent back and bound. She was buried in an awkward position.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“Yeah. The ropes hadn’t rotted completely away. Neither had the tape that was used as a gag.”

“Ropes rotted away? How old is this body?”

“The M.E. there figures at least twenty-five years.”

“Where’s there?”

“Near Leighton, Wisconsin.”

“Long way from here. Long time ago.”

“They might know who it is. Girl named Sherri Klinger, disappeared in nineteen eighty-six. Her family’s since moved out of the area. Father died five years ago. A mother’s all that’s left. They’ve contacted her, but I can’t scare up any info on that yet.”

Quinn was silent for a while, trying to process this.

“It might mean nothing,” he said.

“Yeah, but I got a couple of things I’d like to fax to you. A police artist’s drawing of how the dead woman might have looked with flesh on her. Also, there are some old photographs of Sherri Klinger.”

Even as Lido was speaking, the fax machine on the other side of the office started to click and buzz.

“Coming through,” Quinn said, and the two men sat and waited.

When the buzzing and clicking stopped, and a beeper sounded, Quinn stood up and went over to the fax machine.

He drew four pages from the plastic basket. The first was the police artist’s rendition of how the dead woman might have looked when alive, front and profile. The three accompanying pages were copies of old newspaper photos of Sherri Klinger.

All of them looked like Pearl.

Quinn stood staring for several seconds then, carrying the faxes, returned to his desk.

“Pearl,” he said.

“Not exactly,” Lido said, “but it could be her sister. Anyway, that was the first body.”

“What?”

“A cadaver dog found another body, buried about twenty feet from Sherri’s Klinger’s grave. Young woman, killed the same way as Sherri. Haven’t identified that one yet.”

“She’ll resemble Pearl,” Quinn said.

And then said something else, under his breath:

“Daniel Danielle.”

Quinn phoned Chancellor Schueller at Waycliffe and posed the same questions.

The chancellor’s voice got higher, as if he were experiencing sudden gravitational pull. He said, absently, “I’m not aware of any of these so-called connections. As for Professor Pratt gathering material for a topical subject… why, that’s easy enough to understand.”

Yet you seemed troubled when I asked you about it.

“I suppose,” Quinn said.

Schueller absently repeated it. “An eminent domain case in the city… does it have something to do with Waycliffe?”

“It might.” Quinn could picture Schueller, youthful and dynamic, as university chancellors went, seated at his desk, sucking his unlit pipe, wearing his blazer with the leather elbow patches, lying his ass off.

What’s wrong with this picture?

“Ah! Yes!” Schueller said. Was he snapping his fingers, up there at Waycliffe? He was trying to sell what he was saying; Quinn could easily sense that, even over the phone. For a guy like Schueller, who was used to lying and was practiced and smooth at it, the slight upward pitch of his voice told Quinn he was hearing bullshit.