John Lutz - Serial

“So were lots of people. Folks you’d never imagine.”

“Somebody-maybe another Philip Wharkin-wrote his name in blood on the bathroom mirror in Millie Graff’s apartment after he killed her.”

“You don’t say? I never read that in the paper.”

“It hasn’t been released to the press.”

“Well, if you want, I’ll keep mum. I was always ready to work with the cops. Hell, you’d be surprised the off-duty cops that came into the club.”

“I doubt that I would,” Quinn said. “But don’t spread the name Philip Wharkin around. What I would like is for you to contact some of the old friends you told me you didn’t have, and ask if they know anything about Millie Graff.”

“If I can locate them, I’ll sure do that. Was Millie a bad girl?”

“Straight as Central Park West, far as we can tell.”

“That don’t mean anything,” Turner said. “People outside the S and M world don’t have a clue.”

“That’s why I want you to ask around inside,” Quinn said. “Find me a clue.”

He stood up from the sofa with some difficulty, understanding why Turner didn’t scoot all the way back in his chair. He gave Turner one of his cards. “Leave a message if I’m not in, okay, Bill?”

“Sure, I will. Cops and me, we were always tight. Fun was what it was all about in those days. A certain kinda fun, anyway.” The frail-looking little man stood up with surprising nimbleness and escorted Quinn to the door. “Listen,” he said, when Quinn’s hand was on the knob. “You’re on this case because of the police commissioner, right?”

“That’s so.”

Turner adjusted his brightly colored ascot as if it might be tightening like a noose. “I mean, he ain’t gonna have my ass if he finds out I’m asking around about this Millie Graff, is he?”

“Not a chance,” Quinn said. “He’s very understanding.” And in a lower yet harder voice: “So am I.”

Hogart, Missouri, 1991

Wham! Milt Thompson hit a home run into the left-field upper deck of Busch Stadium in St. Louis and the crowd stood and roared.

So did Roy Brannigan.

Beth Brannigan watched her husband sit back down and guzzle the last of his can of beer as he watched the Cardinals-Pirates ball game on their old console TV. He was slouched on the sagging gray sofa. On the wall behind him was a huge, roughly hewn wooden crucifix that had been created with a chain saw. He’d bought it at a flea market for ten dollars. Beth had seen him pray before it for the Cardinals to win. Jokingly, he pretended, but he didn’t fool her. In Roy Brannigan’s mind, it wasn’t the cardinals in Rome who counted. They couldn’t hit a curve ball.

Beth was a sweet-looking woman with a heart-shaped face and guileless blue eyes. She had a brown fleck in one eye that gave her a kind of intense look that somehow added to her appeal. Her figure was trim and shown to advantage in a red tank top and short Levi’s cutoffs. She was barefoot. Beth had once overheard a man describe her as fetching. She thought that was fitting, the way she fetched for Roy.

Roy’s idea of marriage was based on the Old Testament, and he spun it with his own interpretation. He insisted they attend church every Sunday, as they had this morning. After church they’d have a big meal at home, and Beth would clean up afterward. If the Cardinals were playing a day game, which they seemed to do most Sundays during the season, she’d make sure the kitchen was cleaned up before Roy finished smoking his after-meal cigar out on the porch. She’d have a cold beer waiting when he came back inside to watch the game. Religious though he might be, he had no qualms about Beth working on the Lord’s day.

Nor did religion keep Roy from accumulating a large cache of pornography, of which he thoroughly disapproved. He fancied himself a student and critic of erotica. He would from time to time write reproachful letters to the publishers, excoriating them for publishing such filth. But he bought most of his collection by mail, and often an order form and the letter to the publisher would be posted simultaneously.

This televised contest was a night game, part of a twilight double-header to make up for a rainout earlier in the season. Beth had been busy most of the day, and they’d had snacks as well as their usual midday meal.

She was used to tending to Roy’s needs. Beth didn’t really mind the hard work, when he treated her well. When he was gentle with her.

Which wasn’t all the time.

Her mom and dad over in Hawk Point had suspected Roy might be abusing Beth. But her dad had lung cancer, and her mother was too afraid of Roy and the bleak future to interfere other than to warn Beth not to let things go too far. They never had come right out and said what “things” were. But then, neither had Beth.

Even the impotent support of her mother and father disappeared last October when both Beth’s parents were killed in an auto accident on Interstate 70. Their car had run headon into a pickup truck speeding the wrong way. The driver of that vehicle had been killed, too. The autopsy showed he’d been legally drunk.

Beth had mourned hard and been comforted by Roy and his well-worn Bible. They’d prayed together fiercely at home, and with the tiny congregation at the Day of Heavenly Atonement Church.

And then one day Roy acted as if he’d decided she’d mourned enough. It was time to get on with life, he’d informed her, and quoted the appropriate verse in scripture.

Not about to challenge the Bible, Beth had allowed her relationship with Roy to resume its bumpy course.

The pain of grief had lessened, but the course never smoothed. It had led here, to the squalid living room of their ramshackle house and a ball game televised from St. Louis.

“You want some more beer, hon?” she asked.

There was crowd noise from the TV and he didn’t hear her. He was suddenly up again from the sofa, in a fury. He hurled his empty beer can so it bounced off the screen door.

“That wasn’t a foul ball!” he yelled, pointing at the TV. “That umpire’s gonna burn in hell.”

“All of ’em, probably,” Beth said.

“Yeah.”

She thought he was agreeing with her, then realized he’d meant that yeah, he wanted another beer.

“Well,” she said, “we’re all out.”

“Man’s gotta be blind not to see that wasn’t a foul ball,” Roy said.

“I thought all umpires were blind,” Beth said. “Figured it was a requirement for the job.”

Roy was pacing, still angry at the bad call in St. Louis. “Blind or crooked, is what they are. Doggone all of ’em!”

“God’ll see they get what’s comin’ to ’em,” Beth said. “Or the devil.” At this juncture, God appeared to favor the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“Do I have to tell you?” Roy asked.

“Tell me what?”

“You say we’re outta beer, so go get some more. There’s money in my wallet on the dresser.”

Beth was already on the way. Roy’s anger at the umpires might easily be redirected toward her.

Her blue-soled rubber thongs flapping on her feet, and a ten-dollar bill tucked low in the back pocket of her Levi’s cutoffs, she set off along Pick Road toward Willis’s Quick Pick Market. It was about a quarter of a mile away, near the sometimes busy county road. Though it was dark and shadowy along Pick Road, she could see the combination convenience store and gas station ahead like a bright oasis of light in the night.

Pick Road was paved, but the blacktop had broken up, and Beth couldn’t make out some of the cracks until she’d stubbed a toe or come close to turning an ankle. It was no place to walk with floppy thongs. She moved off the narrow road and made better time on the grassy shoulder, but it was still slow going.