John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“Every now and then,” she said, “your good breeding shows.”

“You object?”

“No. I like it. To most of the single men in Manhattan ‘good breeding’ signifies something else altogether.”

He laughed. “Well, I like to think I know something about that, too.”

“You should write a book,” she said.

“I’d title it Terri. ”

Once inside her apartment, they drank to that.

“Around the time of the shooting,” Fedderman said to Rosa Pajaro, “you loaded a cart with some clean laundry in the basement and brought it up in an elevator to lobby level.”

“ Si. Yes. There is a storage room on this level where extra linens and other supplies are kept.”

“It’s near where Mr. Becker was shot.”

He stared at her expectantly, even though he hadn’t actually asked a question.

She returned his gaze for only a few seconds and then dropped her eyes to stare at the maroon carpet of the Antonian Hotel lobby. They were sitting and talking in what the management called a conversation nook. The maid was a terribly unskilled liar. Fedderman found himself liking her, and thought she must have been extremely attractive a few years and pounds ago. Rosa Pajaro was a woman who showed hard wear.

“Is right,” she said, finally.

“When you rolled your cart toward the storage room, did you notice anyone or anything suspicious in the corridor?”

She shook her head no. “ Solitario. I was alone with my job.”

He had the impression she might speak English better than she was letting on. But that was a common ploy for illegal aliens, which Rosa Pajaro might very well be. In order to get her job here at the Antonian, she had to have papers, but papers could be forged.

“According to your records,” Fedderman said, “you’ve been working here at the hotel for six years.”

“Yes, that is so. I work hard.”

“So it says here.” The papers Fedderman consulted mentioned nothing of the sort, being a computer printout of directions and a restaurant menu. “You’re rated as an excellent employee. One who would tell the truth.”

“I am saying what is true. There is nothing to tell.” Again she couldn’t meet his eyes. “When this terrible thing happened, I must have been in the storage room.”

“Or it might have happened before you arrived.”

“ Si. Or even after I left.”

“Did you notice any blood on the carpet near the door to outside?”

“No. Nothing.”

“You’re saying there was no blood?”

“I say only that I didn’t notice any.”

“Was the door to outside closed all the way and locked?”

“I couldn’t say. I didn’t pay attention to the door, only to my work.”

Fedderman stared at her. He knew she was lying, but probably not about anything pertinent. Maybe she’d seen Becker’s body before it was moved and then hightailed away. Or maybe she had seen the bloodstain, though on the maroon carpet it wouldn’t have been very noticeable. He could take Rosa Pajaro in and lean on her, make her afraid, even suggest she was a suspect. But she couldn’t be held, and when she got the opportunity she might run. If she was an illegal, so what? Fedderman didn’t want to make trouble for her. There was really no reason to push her, he thought, unless she might be the killer, which was too unlikely to consider.

“I am in trouble?” she asked, alarmed by his thoughtful silence.

Fedderman smiled at her. “Not as long as you’ve told the truth.”

“That’s what I’ve done, I swear.” She crossed herself. Fedderman wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have done it backward.

Wow. Something’s not right.

She knew she was beginning to slouch on the sofa, but she couldn’t seem to make herself sit up straight.

The food, the wine, the walk from the subway stop to her apartment had made Terri Gaddis exhausted. After the third glass of wine, her eyes began involuntarily closing. It felt as if invisible fingers were pushing them shut.

She didn’t want to feel this way. Richard expected some of that wild sex she’d mentioned at lunch. She’d almost promised him. He’d certainly be willing, but the wine was having its effect and she was fast losing her desire.

What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so…

Struggling not to fall asleep, she heard him rise from beside her on the sofa and cross the room, go into the kitchen.

When he returned, he lifted her head and gently placed the rim of a glass against her lips.

“Drink this, sweetheart. It’ll fix you up.”

His voice sounded far, far away. She sipped and was mildly surprised. She tasted the same wine she’d been drinking, one of the reasons she felt so tired.

“S’more chardonnay,” she muttered.

“You say you want more?” he asked, amused.

He’s deliberately misunderstanding.

“Same…” she murmured. She tried to say the word chardonnay again, but it was too difficult. Her tongue was getting numb, and there was no feeling in her cheeks. If she tried to touch them, they might not be there. They might be made of wood. She tried again. “Chardonnay.” She heard something slurred and incomprehensible and realized it was her own voice.

Richard answered, she was sure, but she couldn’t understand him as she dropped into a comforting warm darkness.

As she was keying the dead bolt on the door, Pearl heard the phone ringing inside her apartment. Which of course made her hurry and fumble and drop the key on the hall carpet.

By the time she’d opened the door and reached the phone, it had rung at least nine times. Maybe something important.

Too exhausted to be cautious and check caller ID, she took several long steps across the living room and scooped up the receiver.

“Pearl? Is that you, dear?”

Her mother, calling from Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. Pearl’s heart took a dive.

“Pearl?”

“Me.”

“It’s your mother, Pearl, calling from Hades.”

Pearl tried at least to keep a civil tone in her voice. “Assisted living isn’t Hades, Mom.”

“So purgatory then. A stop on the way down, just to torture. I’ve been calling and calling, and not even your machine answers anymore.”

Pearl saw that the LED display on her answering machine was signaling that there was no more room for messages. It also indicated that she’d received fifteen messages. She stretched the phone cord so she could sit on the end of the sofa.

“Is something wrong, Mom?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Yes, wrong. I’m concerned, as a good mother should be, about my daughter, which is only natural and is why I’m calling, to find out some pertinent information about it.”

Pearl didn’t like this at all. She was worn down by the gauntlet of conversations she’d run all day with people who couldn’t remember, didn’t recall, didn’t care, might be lying anyway. “What would it be, Mom?”

“The thing just behind your ear, dear. That’s what it is, and it’s more important than you, in your hectic and solitary life, seem to think.”

“It’s only a mole, Mom.”

“You know this?”

“I’m sure enough of it that I’m not worried.”

“So now you have medical opinions? Are you an actual medical doctor, like Dr. Milton Kahn? No, Pearl, you are not. It’s not your place to examine a mole and just make up a diagnosis, not to mention a prognosis. This is a worry to me and to all who love you, and you should consider that and them.”

“It’s my mole,” Pearl said, feeling at that moment the hopelessness of her position.

“So have you recently checked your mole?” her mother asked.

“Recently enough.”

“And is it the same in shape, color, and size? Has it moved at all?”