John Lutz - Serial

Quinn wondered if she knew about her father’s earlier life. He almost asked, then decided it wasn’t relevant. If it ever became relevant, he’d ask.

“We in the porn industry dislike it more than anyone else if some animal’s out there stalking and killing women,” Turner continued. “It brings heat. Like this visit. And all when you should be directing your efforts toward finding the killer.” The silk kimono swished and sparked rhythmically as he escorted Quinn to the door. It made a faint sound like cellophane crackling. “You believe me, I hope.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Quinn said. “It’s more that I’m not sure you speak for everyone in the porn industry. To them, women are product and profit.”

“Not dead women,” Turner said, opening the door to the vestibule. “They’re trouble.”

He offered his hand for Quinn to shake, but Quinn ignored it, fearing electrocution.

Outside on the sidewalk, Quinn wondered if he could believe anything Turner had told him.

Hogart, 1991

Westerley and Billy used their flashlights and were helped by whatever moonlight filtered through the leaves. Willis stood off to the side, as instructed. Now that they’d reached their destination, he switched off the flashlight he’d brought from the store. He had no idea where to shine it, anyway.

Obviously Beth had put up a struggle. The brown carpet of last year’s half-decayed leaves had been violently stirred so that here and there bare earth was exposed. The leaves were thick enough that they prevented footprints, and there were none in the bare spots. Westerley noticed a small strip of torn fabric that looked as if it had come from Beth’s T-shirt. He kept the beam of his flashlight trained on it while Billy stooped and used a tweezers to lift the fragment and bag it.

Off to the side of where the main struggle seemed to have taken place was a ripped paper sack. Next to it was a six-pack of Wild Colt beer, also ripped open. Westerley went to it and saw that it contained three cans. There were no empty beer cans lying about. Westerley guessed the rapist had punched Beth in the eye in an attempt to quiet her screams. When that didn’t work, he hurriedly grabbed three beer cans for the road and tucked them wherever they’d fit in his pockets or on his motorcycle before fleeing the scene.

“This the brand of beer Beth bought at the Quick Pick?” Westerley asked Willis.

“Yeah. That’s all Roy will drink.”

“The guy you saw speeding outta here on a motorcycle, he look like he was carrying anything?”

“Nope. Had both hands on the grips. I’m sure of that. Coulda had something tucked in his saddlebags, though.”

“I’m figuring that,” Westerley said, knowing he was making a lot of suppositions without much evidence.

“I’m sure it was a Harley he was riding,” Willis said. “I used to own one and I know how they sound, ’specially when they’re idling. Potato, potato, potato.”

“Huh?”

“You say potato over and over fast and that’s what a Harley sounds like.”

“Uh-huh.”

Westerley told Billy to cordon off the scene with yellow tape so he could come back tomorrow and examine it in daylight. Nobody was likely to come along and disturb it anyway, until the rape found its way into the newspapers and on TV, and that would take a while. This wasn’t St. Louis or Kansas City.

When Billy was finished cordoning off a rough square by winding crime-scene tape around four trees, the three men trudged from the woods, following the wavering flashlight beams. Willis walked out ahead, leading the way as if he were guiding an expedition.

When the convenience store lights were visible through the trees, Billy leaned close to Westerley and said, “Potato, potato, potato.”

Early the next morning Westerley returned to the crime scene alone. He surveyed the area of the struggle carefully. About ten feet from where the rape must have taken place, he found marks where a motorcycle had been parked. There was a clear indentation from the cycle’s kickstand. He searched for tire tread marks but couldn’t find any.

When he was about to leave, he saw what looked like a dark stain on a dry brown leaf. He stooped low and examined it carefully. It was no more than half an inch across, but he thought he could detect a splatter pattern. He was pretty sure it was blood.

Beth hadn’t bled much, if any, so it might not be her blood, but that of her assailant.

He carefully lifted the entire delicate leaf with tweezers and managed to slide it into one of the plastic sandwich bags the sheriff’s department used for evidence bags. He sealed the top of the bag carefully.

The hospital had been unable to obtain any blood from beneath Beth’s fingernails, though she’d said she’d scratched her attacker, so this blood could be valuable evidence if it was the same type as the suspect’s.

If they had a suspect.

Westerley recalled the words of a former Missouri politician about a wordy but ineffective bill that had passed the legislature. Now if we had some bread and we had some mustard, we could have a ham sandwich, if we had some ham.

New York, the present

On Quinn’s instructions, Vitali and Mishkin revisited the apartments of both Millie Graff and Nora Noon. Something might have been overlooked. Something that linked one or both women to the New York underworld of seamy sex, or to each other.

The two detectives were in Nora’s apartment. It was bright and warm from sunlight beaming through the windows.

Vitali was sorting through the stifling second bedroom, stuffed with hangered garments and bolts of fabric. Mishkin, in the other bedroom, was carefully removing, then replacing, intimate wear in the dresser drawers. He handled the dead woman’s silk and lacy items with his fingertips, a faintly disturbed and embarrassed look above his bushy gray mustache. Sal, glancing in now and then from the room across the hall, reflected as he had many times that his partner shouldn’t have become a cop. The tedious and often repugnant part of the job too often got to Mishkin.

The results were in from the NYPD nerds who’d explored the victims’ computers. Millie Graff’s hard drive was mostly full of dancing and dancers. Restaurant hostess though she might have been, her dream of professional dancing was still strong. There was a site about “the art” of pole dancing, but it actually did seem to concentrate more on the techniques of dancing with a pole than on eroticism. Her e-mail account was mostly about business matters, and discussions of dancers’ progress or lack of same. Her personal account suggested she didn’t have a lot of friends in the city, and at the time of her death no romantic involvement. While online, Millie visited the Drudge Report almost daily and read the digital version of the New York Times. Fair and balanced.

Nora Noon also had visited the Times online. In fact, it was her home page. Illustrations from several fashion magazines were on her computer, along with a downloaded book by Susan Isaacs. She had visited an online dating service a few times but hadn’t signed up. Like Millie, she had a business e-mail address as well as a personal account. The business account was completely about business. The personal account revealed nothing helpful. Nora had also been on Facebook, but most of her input was a thinly disguised ploy to establish business contacts.

“These women,” Mishkin said loudly so Vitali would hear in the other room, “seem to have been normal human beings, but very, very busy.”

“It’s a wonder they found the time to get killed,” Vitali rasped. Lint or something in the air of the crowded little room kept making him almost sneeze.