John Lutz - Darker Than Night

“Yeah,” Pearl said. “Making it look like murder-suicide.”

“But he used a knife this time instead of a gun,” Fedderman pointed out. “Does that add up?”

“If it doesn’t touch on his core compulsion,” Quinn said.

“Or if he’s read the literature on serial killers,” Pearl said, “and knows enough to alter his methods.”

There was a break in traffic, so they crossed the street to where the unmarked was parked in bright sunlight.

When they were seated in the car-Fedderman behind the steering wheel with the engine idling and the air conditioner on high-Pearl, in the backseat, said, “Nift’s gonna go with murder-suicide, and it might wash. The weapon still in hubby’s hand, no sign of a break-in…”

“It won’t wash for long,” Quinn said. “It can’t. There was a chair pulled out from the kitchen table as if somebody’d been sitting there. And there were skid marks on the floor near the bed. Somebody’d been hiding under there and dragged dust with him when he slid out.”

“Maybe the husband, hiding and waiting for the lover to show,” Fedderman suggested.

“But he was in his underwear,” Pearl said. “I think the killer was hiding under the bed. He thought he saw his chance, got out, and was about to leave, maybe out the window, and he heard the Grahams coming and made for the closet.”

“Where would the Grahams be coming from?”

“I don’t know. The kitchen, maybe. They might’ve both been awake and gotten up for a snack.”

Fedderman was quiet for a moment, trying to work out a scenario that made sense where the husband might have slid under the bed in his underwear. Part of a plan. It was difficult if not impossible.

“And there’s the cheese,” Pearl said. “How many people buy something that expensive four at a time?”

“It happens,” Fedderman said. “The rich are, you know…different.”

“The Grahams weren’t the Rockefellers.” Pearl looked out the side window, across the street toward the apartment building they’d just left: red brick above a stone facade, green awnings, ivy growing up one corner out of huge concrete planters. No doorman, but a security system with a keypad, buzzer, and key-activated inner door. It wasn’t the best building in the neighborhood, but it was a good one. It would be interesting to find out what the Grahams were paying in rent.

Fedderman put the car in drive but didn’t pull away from the curb. “We haven’t had breakfast, and looking into that refrigerator made me remember I was hungry.”

“Maybe there’ll be some prints on the cheese wrappers,” Pearl said in a hopeful voice.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Quinn said. “Our guy must have known whatever he bought for his potential victims might be examined, so he probably wiped everything he carried into the apartment. He’s smart.”

“So are we,” Pearl said from the backseat.

“A cheese omelette doesn’t sound bad,” Fedderman said.

Quinn smiled, then said, “Drive.”

After lunch, while Pearl and Fedderman were questioning the Grahams’ neighbors, Quinn sat on a bench in a pocket park on East Fiftieth and called Renz on the cell phone Renz had furnished. It was supposedly a secure line, or nonline, less likely to be tapped than a regular wire connection. Easier to listen in on with a cheap scanner, perhaps, but no one knew Renz had the phone.

“You’ve solved the Graham case,” Renz said when Quinn had identified himself.

“Taken the first step,” Quinn said. He had to speak somewhat loudly because of an echo effect and the constant trickling sound of a nearby artificial waterfall. “We can be pretty sure both Grahams were murdered.”

“What’s that noise?” Renz asked. “You calling me from a men’s room?”

“Maybe you didn’t hear-”

“I heard you,” Renz cut him off. “Of course they were murdered. Just like the Elzners. That’s why I hired you, remember? I figured we had a repeater and the case would blossom. Thing is, Egan will still be seeing murder-suicide.”

“That’s what Nift thinks. I let him think it.”

“Good. I know the basic facts of this case, though, and after the autopsy Nift will have to reveal everything to Egan.”

“I thought Nift was your man in the ME’s office.”

“He is, right now. But Nift is for Nift. And all he can do is delay. He’ll tell Egan it was murder-suicide; then Egan will figure out what you already know. Which is what?”

Quinn explained to Renz about the positions of the bodies, the dust dragged out from beneath the bed, the chair pulled out from the kitchen table, the four wedges of expensive gourmet cheese.

“Cheese this time, eh?” Renz said when Quinn was finished. Then added, “And a knife instead of a gun. We’ve got a repeater who changes his method.”

“It happens,” Quinn said. “Our guy’s method isn’t tied in with whatever makes him tick.”

“Whatever makes him sick,” Renz said. “That’s for you to find out. Get in this motherfucker’s mind, Quinn.”

“Before Egan does,” Quinn said.

“That’s our game. How are Pearl and Fedderman working out?”

“They’re both good ones. Fedderman’s got bloodhound in him. Pearl’s a terrier.”

“Just so they remember Egan wants to send them both to the pound.”

“It’s always in their thoughts,” Quinn assured Renz.

“I was gonna call you,” Renz said, “seeing as cooperation runs both ways. We got a trace on that silencer used in the Elzner case, the Metzger eight hundred Sound Suppressor. In the past five years, one hundred thirty of that model was sold through two outlets: a biannual newsletter called ‘Handgun Nation,’ and a magazine, Mercenary Today. ”

“And you traced all hundred thirty?”

“It turned out to be easier than we thought. A militia group in Southwest Missouri bought a hundred of them, and they were all accounted for when the government shut down their operation two years ago and confiscated their weapons. The other thirty, we’ve tracked. They’re all accounted for but one. It was bought mail order four years ago from Mercenary Today by a guy named Ed Smyth-that’s with a Y — in Tacoma, Washington. He says he sold it at a gun show a year later to a bearded man in a pickup truck. No sales record because it wasn’t a gun, just gun paraphernalia.”

Quinn didn’t bother asking about the bearded man in the pickup. “What else do we know about Smyth with a Y? ”

“That he bought a Russian revolver on that same date. He says he’s a collector, and he lists his age as seventy-nine.”

“Not our guy.”

“Not unless he’s the oldest psychosexual serial killer on record. And Tacoma police think he’s telling the truth about the silencer. They know him because he’s a gun nut, and they say he’s honest.”

“So we need to track the bearded guy in a pickup who bought the silencer. That should be easy.”

“It should be,” Renz said, his tone suggesting he’d been waiting for Quinn’s sarcasm. “Smyth is a straight shooter in more ways than one. He etched his Social Security number in the silencer. Now we have it, and it’s being sent out to various pawnshops and gun dealers. If the beard sold it, we’ll nail him.”

But Quinn knew he wouldn’t be the killer. Whoever they were tracking was too smart to use anything as a weapon that might be traced to him. And there was something else. “Renz-”

“Harley.”

“Harley, you’ve traced silencers sold within the last five years, but what if the silencer was bought before that? There might be hundreds or thousands of them out there you don’t know about.”

“It wasn’t marketed in this country until five years ago.” Renz, ready for him again. Quinn could almost see his smirk. Irritating.