John Lutz: Serial

Forgetting everything else, Quinn ran to the SUV and began pounding on the window with the butt of his revolver, holding the cylinder tight so it remained on an empty chamber and wouldn’t allow the gun to fire accidentally. The girl inside pressed her hand against the glass and he motioned for her to move back.

She did, and a series of blows rendered with all his strength broke the glass. It didn’t shatter much, but enough so that he could grip the shards and pull them out. He removed his shirt and used it so he wouldn’t cut his hands as he tried to pry the rest of the window out.

The girl caught fire. She began screaming over and over, trying to beat out the flames with her bare hands. Quinn could see the flames spreading across the back of her blouse, reaching for her hair.

The sight gave him strength he didn’t know he had, and what was left of the window popped from the frame.

He reached through the window, grabbed the girl’s arm, and dragged her from the vehicle. Pain made him realize he was on fire, too. Both of them were burning.

That was when Quinn glanced beyond the girl, to the other side of the car. And through his pain and fear he saw a distorted miniature face and waving tiny hands in an infant seat. A screaming child. A baby.

Aware now of more flames in the street around him, more burning gasoline, he slung the wriggling young girl over his shoulder and ran with her across the street. He gave her to reaching arms. Hands slapped at him, and someone threw a shirt over him to smother the flames.

He saw the young cop still frozen against the wall. Quinn screamed around the lump in his throat: “There’s a baby in there, other side, rear, in an infant seat!”

The man didn’t move, only stared straight ahead.

Quinn shoved people away and ran back toward the burning SUV, ignoring the pleas for him to stay away. He was aware of sirens. Fire trucks down the street, a block away. Too far away. The flames inside the car were spreading. The vehicle was filling with smoke.

He glanced back and saw the young girl he’d dragged from the wreck huddled on the sidewalk, surrounded by people. A man was bending over her, maybe a doctor.

Quinn continued running toward the burning SUV.

The explosion knocked him backward. He remembered being airborne, then the back of his head hitting solid concrete.

Then nothing was solid and he was falling.

When he regained consciousness the next day in the hospital, he was told the girl he’d pulled from the SUV had seconddegree burns on her upper back and arms, but she was alive. The driver of the vehicle, a teenage sister, was dead. So was the infant in the backseat, their little brother, ten months old.

Quinn had been proclaimed a hero, and the Times ran a photo of him posing with the family of the dead and their one remaining child-Millicent Graff.

The young officer who’d gone into shock and been unable to help Quinn, and perhaps rescue the infant, was fired from the NYPD for dereliction of duty.

The NYPD had sort of adopted Millie Graff. Renz had used the charming child as a political prop, but that was okay because it was obvious that he also felt genuine affection for her.

And now-

“Quinn.”

Renz, across the diner booth, was talking to Quinn.

“Sorry,” Quinn said. “Lost my concentration for a minute.”

“Where’d you go?” Renz asked, with a sad smile.

He knew where.

Quinn felt the beginnings of another kind of flame, deep in his gut, and knew what it meant. In a way, he welcomed it.

This killer had taken away forever something precious that fifteen years ago Quinn had saved. Now he had to be found. He would be found. Quinn wanted it even more than Renz might imagine.

This was personal.

Renz tried the coffee again, put the cup back down, and shoved it away. “Camel piss.” He looked hard at Quinn across the diner table. “You and your investigative agency want this one?”

“Can you convince the higher-ups to turn it over to us?”

“I am the higher-up,” Renz said. “You might be off the force, along with your retread detectives, but when it comes to serial killers no one can top you. I’ll make it clear to everyone from the mayor on down that nailing this sicko is priority number one and we have to use our best. If we don’t, and there are more murders, there’ll be plenty of blame for all the people who wanted a second-rate investigation. That’s a smelly political albatross to have hanging around your neck in this city.”

So Renz had his own political motives for wanting this killer brought down fast. Well, that was fine, if it put Quinn on the case. “You sure we got a serial killer?”

“You know we do, Quinn. We both know this guy will kill again, and probably soon. The way he… the things that were done to Millie, that kinda asshole is gonna be a repeater.”

“Probably,” Quinn conceded.

“And this case interests you. It needs you like you need it. Like I need you. It’ll be like before. We’re not bypassing the NYPD. The city will employ you and your agency on a work-for-hire basis to aid in the investigation. Of course, you’ll be running it.”

Quinn knew that what Renz needed or wanted, he would get. Renz was the most popular police commissioner the city had ever known. Not to mention that he had something on almost everyone above him in the food chain. In New York, even if it meant going to jail later, a popular police commissioner with that kind of leverage wielded real power.

But Quinn did have some reservations.

“Because of Millie, I’ve got a serious personal interest in this case, Harley. We’ve never done anything like this exactly.”

“Nothing is ever like anything else exactly. Think snowflakes.”

Quinn sat drumming his fingertips on the table. There really was little doubt that Millie’s killer would strike again.

“Don’t give me all that contemplation bullshit,” Renz said. “We both know you’re in. I’ll write up the contract we had before, only for more money. I want this bastard in the worst way, Quinn.”

“I can see that, Harley. But you don’t want him more than I do.”

“So we got a deal?”

Quinn stopped with the fingers. “Yeah.”

“Your coffee’s getting cold.”

“Let it.”

It was almost 2 A. M. when Quinn let himself into his apartment on West Seventy-fifth Street. The apartment comprised the first floor of a brownstone that was two buildings down from the building where Quinn had lived for a while with his now ex-wife May, and then for a shorter period of time with Pearl.

He was trying to get Pearl to leave her tiny apartment and move into the brownstone with him. She wasn’t high on the idea. She would spend time with him there, and had even slept over a few times on the sofa, when it was late at night and the subway had stopped running. She’d never had sex with him there, or anywhere else, since her fiance Yancy Taggart had died saving her life.

Quinn was moving slowly and carefully with Pearl. She was still grieving for Yancy, even though almost a year had passed since his death. Quinn understood that, and he took it into account whenever Pearl acted up.

Yancy had been a good man. And he and Pearl might have made a go of their marriage. Quinn had been sorry about what happened to Yancy, too. But time passed, and life continued beyond the point where Yancy had died saving Pearl’s life.

And though it might be bad form and a mistake, the truth was that Quinn wanted Pearl back.

Something rattled upstairs. Then came a metallic ping, and what sounded like a board dropping flat on the floor. Quinn chose to ignore the noise. He’d investigated such things before and found nothing. The old building was prone to make unexpected, unexplainable sounds.