John Lutz - Urge to Kill

He simply couldn’t take the chance. Sometimes the best of hunters came up empty.

When he was dressed, he found the blue carry-on that he’d promised Mitzi he’d open this morning, and walked softly back to her bed.

He stood very still and listened to her breathe, watched her sleep. She looked so innocent, so unknowing.

She would never know the pivotal moment in her life, the moment that had saved her life. Perhaps the great joke of her life. Being Mitzi, she might very well have looked at it that way.

He wanted to kiss her, but knew that might be a mistake. Instead he left the bedroom quietly, left her apartment, and disappeared into the city that was not yet all the way awake.

At 8:00 A.M., after a breakfast of eggs, sausage, and toast, Quinn phoned Renz and described his dawn phone call from the killer.

The rules were simple enough. At nine o’clock this morning the hunt would begin. It was limited to the island of Manhattan. Both men were to be armed only with their identical. 25-caliber revolvers. Quinn was safe in his apartment until nine o’clock, but not afterward. From that point on, he was safe nowhere, nor was his opponent.

“He knows where you live, but you don’t know where he does,” Renz pointed out.

“That’s why I’m probably safe here,” Quinn said. “Our killer’s the sort who’d rather make it a sporting proposition. He wouldn’t consider it cricket to shoot me in my bed.”

“Cricket…” Renz repeated thoughtfully. “He use that word?”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn said.

“But you just used it,” Renz said. “Maybe because he did.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Maybe he watches the BBC.”

“There you go,” Renz said. “He also knows what you look like.”

“Only from newspaper photos, and they don’t do me justice.”

“He’s really not as cricket as he’d like you to think,” Renz said. “Let’s not forget he’s just another psycho asshole who makes his own rules.”

“There’s nothing in those rules about leaving my apartment before nine o’clock,” Quinn said. “That’s what I’ll be doing after I hang up on you.”

“Okay. I’ll issue the order again that no one is to interfere with you or the kil-your opponent.”

Both men were silent for a while, knowing this might well be their final conversation, and that there simply wasn’t any more to say other than everything, and that was impossible to put into words.

“Luck,” Renz said simply, and hung up.

It was when Quinn replaced the receiver that he remembered something. Maybe. It was possible the. 25-Caliber Killer had used the word cricket in their phone conversation. He might have a touch of British accent.

Bloody hell!

Not that it changed anything if the killer did happen to be a Brit. He was soon going to find himself in a sticky wicket.

Quinn finished his coffee; then he hand washed and dried his breakfast dishes before leaving the apartment.

He figured a man who’d done the dishes in preparation for his next meal was unlikely to meet death until then. Surely if you planned for the future it was more likely there would be one.

Think alive, stay alive.

But he didn’t intend to spend the day simply trying to stay alive while keeping an eye out for the killer.

He had a destination.

Quinn left his apartment via the fire stairs, then he did a turn around the block to be reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed. It was possible, maybe likely, that his opponent had his apartment building already staked out though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.

He entered an office building whose lobby, lined with closed shops, ran through to the opposite block. Without pausing, he walked though it and out the opposite tinted glass doors, then doubled back outside, observing all the way. He was reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed.

What he wanted to do was lose himself in the city before nine o’clock.

The morning was warm and still, and with a slight overcast that would burn off by noon. Right now shadows were muted and the light seemed evenly distributed. Shooter’s weather. As he strode along the sidewalk, Quinn was aware of the weight of the Springbok revolver in one suit-coat pocket, his cell phone in the other.

Mustn’t get them confused, he cautioned himself with a smile.

My God! Helen and Zoe are right. At least a part of me is enjoying this.

Though he didn’t think he was being followed, the tension was still there. His back muscles were tight, and his antennae were out for anything unusual, anything that might spell danger. He was moving through the city in a kind of hyperawareness. It was a strain that would eventually take its toll.

The trick, he soon realized, was to stay among people, but not so many that they provided cover to fire from and then escape into.

Stop thinking defensively. You be the one to use crowds for cover, to look for the killer and apprehend him, to take him down if necessary without killing anyone else.

Quinn was just beginning to realize how difficult that would be.

He didn’t want to keep pounding the pavement wearing himself out, and just in case he was at the moment being stalked, he didn’t want to become a still target, whatever the time.

On First Avenue he saw a bus preparing to stop for a knot of people standing in front of a bank. At the last second, he boarded and fed in his change. He found a seat away from the window, near the back of the bus, and settled in for his ride uptown.

The roar of the bus’s engine, the rhythm of accelerating and stopping, allowed him to relax. Manhattan was a big island. It wouldn’t be easy for hunter and prey to come together. The killer would be waiting and watching at points where his quarry might show-workplace, apartment, the near proximities of friends and associates, known haunts. That was part of the problem. Quinn knew practically nothing about his prey, and didn’t know how much his prey knew about him. He was beginning to catch on as to how this game was played. He would at some point have to actively hunt. Hunter could become prey in an instant.

He glanced at his watch. Almost nine o’clock.

He was fair game.

Dr. Alfred Beeker’s blond assistant Beatrice was on duty behind her desk in the anteroom when Quinn arrived at the doctor’s Park Avenue office. She was the only one in the room. A mug of coffee and a half-eaten cinnamon roll sat on a white paper napkin on her desk. The whole place smelled like cinnamon.

She looked up at Quinn and appeared frightened. Had Beeker told her about Quinn? Was Beatrice herself part of the S amp;M lifestyle that Beeker embraced?

“Is Doctor Beeker in?” Quinn asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “the doctor’s with a patient.” Doing a nice job of pretending not to remember Quinn.

“In his office?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to look in on him.”

Now Beatrice looked alarmed. Beeker must have put a word in her ear about Quinn. She glanced back at the door, then at Quinn, weighing her chances of stopping him from barging in on Beeker and not liking them.

“I need to see him,” Quinn said.

“I told you, he’s-”

“You don’t understand,” Quinn said. “I only want to see him. I won’t even say hello, if you don’t want me to.”

She stood up and faced him with her arms crossed. Quinn admired her spunk.

“I’m not going to go away until I see him,” Quinn said. “Which way would be less all-around trouble? If you called in and asked him to step out here for a moment, or if I barged in while he’s in the middle of a session with a patient?”

“What if I call the police?”

“You remember me, dear. The police?” He showed her his shield, though he was sure she already knew who he was.