John Lutz - Urge to Kill

Cindy was aware of the warm sun on her shoulders as she slumped forward and began tossing popcorn to the pigeons from a greasy bag she’d bought from a street vendor. The pigeons waddled cautiously toward the kernels at first, then rushed at them, nudging competitors out of the way. Like people, Cindy thought. Like newspaper readers elbowing each other aside to get to the next edition of City Beat before the rack was empty.

Fighting each other to be able to read her story.

If our situations were reversed, would Renz run the story with all the facts, including the one about how the body had been moved?

She knew the answer to that one.

Her fingers reached the bottom of the popcorn bag and found nothing but the grit of salt. She crumpled up the bag and tossed it to the pigeons. They began to peck at it and fight each other over it.

Cindy watched them. Bird nature. Human nature. Maybe it’s why I really don’t like people.

She brushed her hands together to rid them of most of the salt on her fingers, and then fished her cell phone out of her purse.

Her decision had been made. Already her conscience no longer bothered her.

How could she have even considered not running the entire story? It was strange how sometimes she questioned herself, when she knew her job and her purpose. She had enough on Renz to sink him anytime, if she so chose. At least, he thought she did.

The idea of leverage is when you have it, use it.

No more self-doubts, she vowed, as she pecked out the number that was a direct line to her editor. I’m a professional practicing my profession. A gray and white pigeon standing off from the others and watching her seemed to be bobbing its head in approval.

Zoe lifted her head from Quinn’s bare chest and squinted at the clock by her bed. Almost nine o’clock. She had a ten o’clock appointment with a schizophrenic patient who was beginning to show distinct symptoms of paranoia.

Deciding to let Quinn sleep, she laid back the sheet that was covering her to the waist and gently lifted his arm, which lay heavily across her. As she moved the arm she could feel the strength in it, but it didn’t resist her, as if it knew even as Quinn slept that she was something to be protected rather than harmed.

While Quinn was gentle in bed, he was the most physically powerful man she’d ever slept with, and a man who knew violence. A far cry from the postgraduates and professional intellectual types Zoe was used to. She wondered if it was the sense of danger, of potential violence, that intrigued her. No, she didn’t wonder. She knew. She also knew she was safe with Quinn. The best of both worlds.

Smiling as a coconspirator with her own devilish self, she began sliding out of bed.

His big hand found her shoulder and closed on it, stopping her. Had he even been asleep?

“Gotta get up,” she said, removing his hand. “Appointment.”

“Some troubled soul like me?”

She laughed. “I don’t see you as troubled. Not really.”

“It troubles me that you’re leaving,” he said.

“That’s just the sort of thing I mean.” She managed to avoid his other hand that was snaking around her, and moved back out of reach. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “You might consider joining me.”

“Why? Are you coming apart?”

“For God’s sake, Quinn!”

“Old joke,” he said. He sat up in bed. “I’ll join you, but I can’t put you back together and make you any closer to perfect than you were. Are.”

He’d just planted both bare feet on the floor when the phone rang. Instead of standing up, he watched Zoe walk to pick up the receiver, liking the way her breasts swayed with each hurried step. She had, he decided, the body of a much younger woman.

A shower. Not a bad idea…

“It’s for you,” she said, holding out the receiver for him as if it were a gift she regretted having to present. “Larry Fedderman.”

“I gave him this number,” Quinn said. His cell phone had been cutting out last night, and he knew there’d be no way to charge it in Zoe’s apartment.

Zoe didn’t seem to mind that Fedderman knew where to call. In fact, she seemed pleased that Quinn had told someone about them. She handed him the phone and then sat nude on the bed, watching him, understanding from his face that what he was hearing wasn’t good.

“On my way,” was all he said before hanging up.

He looked over at her. “There’s been another Slicer murder. Our shower had better be a fast one.”

She nodded. His job again. His guiding star. “You go first. I’ll stay out of the way.”

He smiled at her. “I’m sorry about this. It seems when we sleep together in your bed, I’m destined to get a phone call about a murder.”

“That’s right. It’s just like last time…”

He’d only made a casual remark, but something changed in her eyes. He came to her, leaned down, and kissed the top of her head. He brushed his knuckles lightly across her cheek, studying her thoughtful expression.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sure. Go take your shower.”

But he knew something had occurred to her, disturbed her, and he didn’t know what.

He didn’t have time now to find out, but later he’d find the time.

A small, terrified-looking woman in her early twenties sat perched on a wrought-iron bench just down the hall from Terri Gaddis’s apartment, where a stolid uniformed cop was standing guard. With her pinched features and pointed nose, she very much resembled a tiny, nervous bird. She’d obviously been crying, and barely glanced up at Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman as they passed. There was fear in the glance, as well as sorrow. Quinn thought somebody should be looking after her.

The crime scene unit was already inside Terri Gaddis’s cramped apartment, doing their white-glove ballet. Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin were talking to Nift, the obnoxious ME, in a hall that probably led to a small bedroom and bathroom. Mishkin looked ill.

Vitali nodded a hello and motioned with his head. “In the bathroom,” he said in his gravelly voice. Mishkin gave them a faint and sympathetic smile as they edged past, as if to warn them they weren’t going to like what they were about to see.

Mishkin was right.

A tech who’d been dusting the toilet tank and vanity for prints saw them and got out of their way, leaving the tiny bathroom so they had a clear view of what was dangling from a hook in the ceiling.

It was what Quinn had braced himself to see, but it was still worse than he’d imagined. The woman’s upside-down body was laid open from her pubis to the base of her neck. Her internal organs and entrails had been removed and were piled in the bathtub. Flies were beginning to feast.

Terri Gaddis had been an attractive woman. Her face, even with its horror-stricken expression, had somehow escaped being coated with blood and was in sharp contrast to the carnage.

Quinn looked up at the ceiling, almost as if to offer a prayer.

“Bicycle hook,” Pearl said. “The killer located a wooden joist on the other side of the drywall so it would support plenty of weight. You do that if you’ve got a bike to hang.”

Nift had halfway entered the tiny bathroom and was clucking his tongue. “She’s no bicycle, but you can tell she was the kinda woman who’d give you a helluva ride.” He leered at Pearl. “Hello, shweetheart.” It was a bad Bogart imitation.

“Hi, ashhole.”

“It’s like the other victims,” Nift said to Quinn, no longer Bogart and ignoring Pearl. “Same kind of knife was used. Looks like at pretty much the same angle. We’ll know more once we get her to the morgue and I put her back together.”

Why? Are you coming apart?