John Lutz - Urge to Kill

Quinn thought that should be engraved on the tombstones of a lot of people he’d known: He was the stubborn sort. Maybe on his own tombstone.

“I’m getting pressure from on high you wouldn’t believe,” Renz said.

“Am I supposed to be feeling pressure here?” Quinn asked.

“That’s the purpose of this conversation. Mayor told me to light a fire under you.”

“Isn’t that arson?”

“Unless you’re protesting something. Like lack of progress. I know there’s already a fire under you, Quinn, but that’s because I know you, and the mayor doesn’t. I’m simply delivering the message.”

Quinn said nothing while Renz finished his knish, then produced a white handkerchief from a pocket and fastidiously wiped his hands finger by finger.

After stuffing the handkerchief back in his pants pocket, Renz reached into an inside pocket of his suit coat and brought out a folded City Beat and held it out to Quinn. “Sellers has got the exclusive on this; that’s why it wasn’t in the big papers this morning. It’s on their Web sites, though, and radio and TV news is on the story heavy. Sellers painted Wrenner as a victim, said he shot Farr for the same reason women kill their abusive husbands. Wrenner was too dependent on Farr and his job to go out and get another job, just like wifey’s too dependent to get another hubby and goes for the knife or gun instead.”

Accepting the newspaper, Quinn said, “There’s enough truth in it that in some quarters it might wash.”

“That’s what worries me, Quinn. The rest of the media’s already spouting the same nonsense. They’re making it look like murder’s okay in certain circumstances. There are too many damned people in this city who think they’re in those circumstances.”

“Copycats with guns,” Quinn said.

“Only nobody’s got nine lives.”

Quinn looked at a display of miniature digital cameras behind Renz. With all the electronic crap taking over the world, for all they knew they were being video streamed right now. Not that they had anything to hide, but neither one would want…say, the mayor, to see or hear their conversation.

Tucking the City Beat beneath his arm, Quinn said, “What would you have me do about all this, Harley?”

“Catch the bastard,” Renz said, as if the answer was obvious and Quinn had somehow missed it.

“Uh-huh. Gonna have another knish?”

“One’s enough. Moderation in all things. What I’m gonna have next is a cigar.”

“Tell the mayor I’m on fire,” Quinn said.

Renz smiled and motioned to his driver.

“Mission accomplished,” he said, and got into the limo.

“Catch the bastard,” Renz said again, and pulled the door shut so that all Quinn saw in the limo’s tinted window was a bent-nosed, tough-looking guy with a thatch of unruly straight hair. Quinn.

Pearl told herself it was too early for Dr. Eichmann to call about her biopsy report, but she was nonetheless impatient. Quinn was off somewhere in a meeting with Renz, and Fedderman was trading briefings with Vitali and Mishkin so the left hand would know all about the right hand.

She’d been jumpy all morning, still angry at her mother and that prick Milton Kahn, anxious because she’d slept so poorly. She was jacked up on too much coffee and considering taking up smoking to calm her nerves, though she had never smoked. But most of all she was worried about the removed mole. Where was it now, somewhere out of state in a jar on some laboratory shelf? Being whirled dizzily in a centrifuge? Subjected to extreme light, magnification, and probing with sharp instruments?

For the past two hours she’d been seated at her desk, working on her computer because there was nothing more productive or distracting for her to do. Now and then leaning forward to sip more coffee, she played her fingers over the keyboard and jerked and clicked the mouse on its pad, trolling for information on any murders, anywhere, any time, that involved the hanging and disemboweling of the victims.

There was a case in Seattle two years ago, but they’d caught and convicted the guy, who’d turned out to be a former medical student and city employee. Another, five years ago, in California. In that one the killer was a mental case searching for a healthy kidney to be transplanted in exchange for his own diseased one. He’d been caught when he’d broken into a hospital to perform the surgery on himself. His motive was that he’d been unfairly kept too long on the transplant waiting list. He, too, was convicted, and died in prison.

That was it. This kind of murder was less popular than gunshots, stab wounds, poisoning, blunt instruments, or strangulation.

Pearl was about to give up, get another cup of coffee, and do some serious pacing, when on an obscure Web site about crimes against animals she discovered the case of a man named Dwayne Avis. Five years ago he had gotten a suspended sentence and paid a fine after torturing dogs on his upstate New York farm. Six of the animals had been found hanging and gutted in his barn.

Not quite the same thing as dead women, Pearl thought, leaning back in her chair and pressing a fist into her aching back.

But what other leads did they have?

She reread the small-town newspaper article on her computer monitor. Avis expressed no remorse, according to the reporter, and had threatened state police with a shotgun when they entered his property. When subdued and arrested, he stated that the dogs were his and what he did with them was his business. There was no photo of Avis accompanying the article.

Sick bastard, Pearl thought. Who’d do that to defenseless animals and then resist arrest and try to defend his actions? Or maybe he was simply evil. It might not be a bad idea to at least talk to him, make sure he wasn’t getting away with doing the same thing again. After five years, people forgot.

After five years, people had moved away. It was possible Dwayne Avis was one of them. He might be gone or might even have died. Some dog lover might have shot him, and good riddance.

Or maybe he’d moved to New York City.

Pearl manipulated the mouse and made her way electronically to the paper’s front page. It was the Mansard Gazette, headquartered in Mansard, New York. Pearl clicked back to the five-year-old news article about the slaughtered dogs. She printed it out to show to Quinn or Fedderman, when one or the other turned up at the office. Then she made use of the Internet to find out more about Mansard.

It turned out to be a small upstate farming town with a population of less than five hundred. Pearl figured most of that meager number lived on outlying farms. The Web site listed two phone numbers for the Mansard city hall. Pearl called the one titled “Public Relations.”

She didn’t introduce herself as a cop. Small towns could be gossip nests. If Avis did somehow turn out to be a suspect, she didn’t want him alerted that the police were again interested in him.

A perky-sounding woman named Jane Ellen answered the phone and never even asked Pearl’s name, but assumed she must be writing an article or doing a school paper on Mansard-maybe because Pearl led her in that direction.

Pearl listened to a lot about average rainfall and temperature, home prices, school ratings, and something called the Fall Apple Theater, before asking if Dwayne Avis still lived in or around Mansard.

“He’s still on his farm,” Jane Ellen said. Her tone had definitely become cooler.

“I met him once, and he told me about Mansard,” Pearl said.

“Oh? He have anything good to say about it?”

Pearl laughed as if Jane Ellen were joking. “Of course he did.”

“Dwayne is one who keeps pretty much to himself. Likes it out there on his farm, all secluded. Folks pretty much respect his wishes.”