John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“Is his farm far from town?”

“’Bout ten miles.”

“What’s he grow?”

“Not much. Drives his old truck in and sells some tomatoes and corn at a local produce market the town has in season. Sometimes okra.”

Okra? Haven’t had that in years. Don’t miss it. “Does he have any animals on his farm?” Pearl asked.

Jane Ellen was silent for a while. Then she said: “Not anymore. Had some kind of trouble years ago, but that’s not for me to talk about.”

But you just did. “What kind of trouble?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s just stories floating around. I don’t pay much attention to them. Where do you know Mr. Avis from?”

“Oh, I don’t know him at all. We just found ourselves sitting together on a bus once and got to talking. You know, passing strangers thrown together-and he started talking about Mansard, and I found myself getting interested.”

Jane Ellen was starting to get suspicious. It wouldn’t be good if Dwayne Avis learned someone had called and inquired about him.

“So tell me,” Pearl said, “just what is the Fall Apple Theater?”

“I realize we’re both usually free around lunchtime,” Zoe said, “but we’ve got to do something about meeting like this.”

“We need a bigger bed,” Quinn said.

Zoe didn’t seem amused. She was standing alongside her bed, where Quinn still lay nude and perspiring and sexually sated. “You know what I mean,” she said. “I’m going to have to hurry to be in time for my next appointment.”

Quinn thought she sounded like a hotel prostitute, but he decided he’d better keep that to himself. He lay quietly and watched her dress. She’d showered, and her body was still damp despite all her toweling off, which made her clothes stick to her. He watched her wriggle into her panties, then her slacks. She smoothed material with her hands, tugged at it, rearranged it, glanced at her image in the dresser mirror and seemed dissatisfied by the way the slacks fit. Quinn thought they looked just fine. She bent down and picked up her bra from where she’d dropped it on the floor an hour earlier. He watched her extend her elbows out while leaning forward and reaching behind her to fasten the clasp. The movement reminded him of a graceful exotic bird flexing its wings.

“You sure you have to leave right away?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m sure.” She reached for her blouse.

While she was standing at the mirror working a comb through her mussed hair, he sat up in bed and scooted his body so he was leaning with his back propped against the pillows.

Zoe was fully dressed now. As soon as her hair was to her satisfaction, she’d pick up her purse, kiss him good-bye, and be gone. They were both out of the mood now, even as they enjoyed the afterglow. Quinn knew he should follow Zoe’s example and reset his mind for work. Noontime assignations were fun-more than fun-but you couldn’t let them control your life.

Still, he enjoyed simply watching her.

She turned sideways and craned her neck, looking out of the corner of her eye to see if her hair was okay in back. For some reason, the gesture reminded him of Pearl. Then he knew why. It was reminiscent of Pearl examining her mole.

“You know Pearl?” he said.

She caught his eye in the mirror. “I feel that I do.”

“She had this mole right behind her ear that kept worrying her. Worried her so much she had it removed and sent away for a biopsy. Now she’s worried about what the biopsy results will be. So rattled she has a hard time even sitting still. Her concern is way out of proportion.”

“And?”

“I’m afraid it’s getting in the way of her work. I guess I’m asking you, as a psychoanalyst, if there’s anything that’d ease her mind, make her revert to her old self on the job.”

“Does she suspect the mole is cancerous?”

“I don’t know what she suspects.”

“She’ll have the biopsy report pretty soon; then she’ll know, and even if the news is bad, she’ll find some relief from her immediate anxiety. Is there some reason for her to think she might receive bad news about the mole?”

“Her mother,” Quinn said.

Zoe stopped teasing her hair with her wide-toothed comb and looked at him curiously in the mirror. “Some genetic problem?”

I’ll say!

“Her mother’s a pistol,” Quinn said. “Pearl says she’s trying to get her to go see this doctor Pearl used to date, get them together again. He’s a dermatologist, and Pearl’s mother figures if she can get Pearl worried enough about the mole, Pearl will make an appointment to see Milton Kahn-the dermatologist.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Well, you’d have to know Pearl’s mother.”

“I know about matchmaking mothers, and Pearl’s sounds like an extreme example.”

“Anyway, Pearl saw a different dermatologist and is waiting for the results.”

“Good for Pearl. But she’s defying her mother. That might be leading to a heightened sense of apprehension. Mother’s always right. That phrase stays with many of us all our lives. Ruins many lives.”

“So what should I do?”

Zoe finished with the comb, walked over, and kissed Quinn on the lips. “Wait,” she said. “Like Pearl.”

Then she smiled at him and hurried from the room.

Quinn lay for a while longer in Zoe’s bed, feeling the rush of cool air from the window unit and listening to traffic below on Park Avenue, letting his mind wander. He could still feel the heat of Zoe from her side of the bed, still smell her and almost hear her moans of ecstasy.

An uneasiness crept into his state of quiet bliss.

Why did I make love to Zoe, then ask her about Pearl?

Why the hell did I do that?

But an old cop knew that just because there was a question didn’t mean there was an answer.

Quinn was parking the Lincoln in front of the office when his cell phone chirped. He fished it from his pocket with one hand while spinning the steering wheel with the other to maneuver the nose of the long car toward the curb. Sometimes driving the Lincoln in Manhattan reminded him of captaining an ocean liner in a port crowded with smaller, faster ships.

He pushed the phone’s talk button by feel, said, “Quinn.”

“It’s Feds,” said the voice at the other end of the connection. “I got filled in by Vitali and Mishkin about the Farr shooting. They were close and heard the squeal on their car radio and got to the scene ten minutes after Farr was killed. The shooter, Bertrand Wrenner, was sitting on the front steps of Farr’s building. The victim was sprawled half in, half out of the place, across the threshold. Wrenner was sobbing and still holding the murder weapon. The uniforms first on the scene took it from his hand, then read him his rights.”

Quinn put the shift lever in park and turned off the engine. “He’s confessed?”

“They couldn’t get him to stop confessing.”

“I already heard from Renz on the ballistics tests,” Quinn said. He made no effort to get out of the car; reception was good here, and it was a comfortable, quiet place to talk on the phone. “Smith and Wesson twenty-two caliber. Not our gun. Not our serial killer.”

“Another half-ass duel,” Fedderman said, “only this time the winner got overwhelmed by what he did and broke down right there. Motive, gun, opportunity, witnesses, confession. No way not to get a conviction.”

“Ordinarily,” Quinn said.

“Renz is scared of this one, right?”

“You guessed it, Feds. The media’s already casting the killer as a victim, comparing him to an abused dependent wife. Some T-shirt company is probably already printing FREE BERTY shirts.”

“Berty?”

“That’s what Bertrand Wrenner goes by.” The sun was blasting down on the parked car, heating up the interior. Quinn was ready for the conversation to be over.