John Lutz - Serial

She lay curled and quiet on her side, not attempting to stand.

The woods were silent.

It seemed as if forever passed.

Beth tried a scream and merely choked. Tried again.

This time she emitted a loud screech.

Then several more.

A great roar startled her and she drew her body into a ball.

Another roar. She recognized this one as a motorcycle engine.

The cycle gave two loud, abrupt snarls, as if issuing a final warning to Beth, and then roared intermittently and unsteadily as it made its way along the narrow path. Beth heard the Harley clear its throat like a triumphant beast as it broke from the woods. A few seconds later it emitted a steady yowl as it reached the state road.

Beth screamed some more, and then fell silent.

She continued to lie on her side, motionless. She didn’t want to rejoin the world outside the woods anytime soon. The darkness that had been her enemy had now become her ally and protector. Time moved for her, but slowly and in a disjointed manner.

Willis, at the convenience store, heard the scream when he stepped outside to bring in his LIVE BAIT folding sign.

He was sure it wasn’t an animal.

New York, the present

Mishkin and Vitali phoned Quinn on their way to the Nora Noon crime scene and arrived before anyone other than the two uniforms who’d taken the call in their radio car. One of the uniforms, a guy named Sorkin, had worked before with the two detectives and nodded to them. Sorkin had a long, lean face dotted with moles. His features were pale, making the moles more prominent, and he was perspiring. Vitali knew it would take a lot to bring about that kind of physical reaction in the veteran cop.

They were in the hall outside an open apartment door.

“We got a dead woman in the bedroom,” the other uniform said. A black man with a small, neat mustache and sad eyes with a lot of white showing beneath the dark irises. Sorkin nodded as if to show that he agreed with his partner.

Before entering the apartment, Vitali glanced over at a graceful, astonishingly attractive woman with black hair and high cheekbones. Alongside her was her physical opposite, a sweaty, chubby guy in dark green work clothes. They were down the hall about twenty feet, pretty much out of earshot.

“Those two are the building super and a friend of the vic,” Sorkin said.

“Which one’s the super?” Vitali asked in his gravel-pan voice.

“Not the time to joke, Sal,” Mishkin admonished him. He looked at Sorkin with his mild blue eyes. “Go on with what you were saying.”

Sorkin bobbed his head. “They discovered the body when they found the chain lock on and nobody answered their knock or call. Michelle, that’s the female one, had an appointment with Noon and she never showed. Michelle couldn’t raise her on the phone or by knocking, so the super-he’s the-”

“We know,” Mishkin said.

“Well, he couldn’t get in with his key because of the chain lock. Michelle told him to go get a bolt cutter, and he did.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Vitali growled.

“They smelled something coming from the bedroom, like what you can smell even out here.”

“Not barbecue,” Sorkin’s partner said.

“We’ll go in and have a look,” Vitali said. “Hold on to Michelle and the super, figuratively speaking, so we can get their statements.”

“I get Michelle,” Sorkin’s partner said.

Mishkin gave him a withering look.

“Everybody on the way?” Vitali asked.

It was Sorkin who answered. “Sure, we called it in. That’s procedure. You know that. Crime scene unit’s on the way, along with the ME, some real detectives-excuse me, Sal, but I mean, you two guys have gone private.”

“Semi-private, in this case,” Sal said.

“What exactly does that mean?” Sorkin asked.

“We got special powers even though we’re once removed, like a divorced father on visiting day.”

Sorkin seemed to think that over and find it adequate.

Mishkin removed a small tube from a pocket, squeezed a worm of something onto the tip of his right forefinger, and smeared it into his bushy gray mustache. The eye-watering smell of menthol displaced the faint odor of scorched flesh. If he didn’t supplant the various stenches of death with the overriding pungency of mentholated cream, Mishkin’s stomach sometimes acted up at homicide scenes.

“Ready, Harold?” Vitali asked.

Mishkin dried his finger with a handkerchief, nodded, and they went in.

The first thing they noticed was the blood. It was all over the body. Then it became obvious that some of it wasn’t blood, but the red of raw flesh showing at the edges and beneath where skin had been sliced. Peeled flesh. The victim appeared to have been partially skinned alive. Some of her pale skin was dangling in shreds, left attached at the top and narrowing to points at the bottom. There was more blood that had come from where skin had been broken on the victim’s wrists and ankles, from her struggle against the pain.

Pain showed in every line and angle of her face, as if she still suffered even in death. Like the first victim, her eyes were fixated with horror and staring at nothing. There was a thin silver chain around her neck, bearing the letter S.

On the nightstand next to the bed was an electric hair curler. Sal noted that it had been switched off. He also noted the dozens of narrow rectangular burns all over the victim’s nude body. Burns where they would hurt the most. Was she burned before or after the partial skinning? Any of the injuries would have caused the victim to lose consciousness, but there had been no relief from the pain. As with the last victim, around this one lingered the faint but sharp odor of ammonia. Vitali figured Harold might not have needed his mentholated cream this time.

“Sadistic bastard!” Harold said.

“The window’s partly opened over there,” Vitali said. “That’s why the chain lock was on. He locked her in before going down the fire escape.”

Noises behind them made them turn, figuring it was the crime scene unit, or even real detectives.

It was Quinn.

“Feds is out in the hall interviewing the super and the woman who found the body,” he said. “Pearl’s on the way.”

Sirens began echoing through the city’s stone canyons. Everyone stood and listened for a moment, and it became obvious the yowling was headed in their direction.

Of course, all that yowling didn’t mean the vehicles were making good time in Manhattan traffic. Emergency vehicles could howl and yodel as if they were doing ninety while sitting perfectly still blocked in by cars.

“Bet you Pearl will beat them here,” Sal said.

Quinn shook his head. “I wouldn’t bet against Pearl.”

He strained forward toward the corpse, noticing something, then went over and looked more closely at one of the bound and bloody ankles.

“Looks like something, probably a finger, has been dragged through this blood,” he said.

They all glanced around, and then moved toward the bathroom at the same time. The other two detectives fell back in deference to Quinn and let him enter first.

There were bloodstains in the white basin and on white towels. But most of the blood was on the medicine cabinet mirror, where it had been used to write what presumably was a man’s name: Simon Luttrell.

Quinn left the bathroom and moved through the bedroom and down a short hall to the living room. Sorkin and his partner were still there, the partner leaning in the doorway, Sorkin visible outside in the hall. Guarding the crime scene even though Harley Renz’s growing and unhealthy influence had gotten Quinn and his team inside before the yellow tape went up.

Quinn nodded at the two uniforms as he went out into the hall. The sirens were right outside now, some of them growling to silence. They were going to beat Pearl here after all.