John Lutz - Serial

Sense my thoughts?

I already served time for raping you. Maybe I have a free one coming. Maybe more than just rape. I paid. You should pay.

Her stride was brisk and rhythmic, hurried but not panicked. Not yet.

Tap, tap, tap…

Faster now. She was picking up her pace. Afraid of something. Did she know he was here? No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t be sure.

He was certain she hadn’t spotted him.

He dropped back, confused by her obvious uneasiness, and saw a figure detach itself from the shadows and fall in behind Judith. The figure was that of a man. Medium height. Medium build. That was all he could be sure of from this distance.

Jock slowed his pace and tailed the man who was following Judith. Unquestionably, the shadowy figure was acting furtively. What was going on? Was Judith getting plainclothes protection? Had she gotten the police interested in him again?

No, he was sure the police would have approached him or come to his door and warned him. Since the day Judith had pointed her finger at him in a lineup, he’d been close acquaintances with the police, with the prison system, with the thugs that kept the order. They were all alike.

Sometimes they wore uniforms, sometimes not. But he was positive the figure ahead wasn’t a policeman. The police didn’t work that way. Didn’t look that way. Didn’t feel that way.

Jock watched the man following Judith stand across the street from her as she entered her apartment building.

The man tilted back his head and stared up at the correct window and waited patiently until it became illuminated. Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked away. His gait was different now. More relaxed. The intensity had gone out of him.

Excitement rippled through Jock like a chill. Something strange was happening here. Someone else had entered their private, fearful world.

He wasn’t the only one stalking Judith.

It was a few minutes past eleven the next morning. Quinn was alone in the office, a quiet cocoon in the maelstrom of Manhattan. The sharp ring of the phone was startling. He squinted at caller ID. Nift from the morgue. Quinn reached for the receiver.

“I won’t keep you in suspense,” Nift said, when Quinn had picked up. “Official cause of Candice Culligan’s death was a heart attack.”

Quinn was slightly surprised. “Pain did that to her?”

“More likely the thought of more pain. Under the kind of torture she underwent, sometimes the body and mind simply can’t endure any longer. If Candy hadn’t had the coronary event, she would have soon bled to death from the knife wounds. The partial skinning process.”

Candy. Not only was Nift on a first-name basis with the woman’s corpse, he was using a nickname. Quinn wondered sometimes about Nift’s relationships with his female subjects. Pearl had voiced suspicions about the obnoxious little ME, and Pearl had an annoying way of being right about people.

“What about the way her throat was cut open?” Quinn asked, trying to shake the creepy feeling that sometimes came over him when he was talking with Nift.

“A sharp, broad, and curved knife blade did that in two intersecting cuts, probably done slowly. The cutting wasn’t as deep or damaging as it appeared. The throat wound might have been the final one inflicted, and the killer thought it was the coup de grace. But she was already near death when her throat was cut. I say near death because her heart was still pumping when the injury was inflicted. The wound bled enough to indicate that.”

“Was the same knife used to inflict all her wounds?”

“It looks that way. A handy little blade. And by the way, there was no damage from the necklace chain with the S charm. And apparently it was put on the victim before her death.”

“I don’t suppose there was anything of the perpetrator on her.”

“Not even a hair. And the only blood on her was her own. There was no flesh beneath her fingernails. No saliva or sperm anywhere. Just the marks of long and arduous torture, mostly of peeling off her top layer of skin and leaving it hang in shreds, until finally her heart gave out. I’ve been over every inch of her, Quinn, and I can tell you this little tootsie went the hard way.”

Little tootsie. Jesus, Nift!

“There were twelve carefully placed cuts on her body, used to initiate the peeling process, and twenty-seven stab wounds in and around her pubic area. The knife penetrated her vagina at least twice. Not far, but it did great damage.”

“Raped with a knife blade,” Quinn said. “Was she dead at the time?”

“No, those injuries were all antemortem.”

“He’s one sick bastard,” Quinn said. “What about the blood around her mouth. The shoe do that?”

“No,” Nift said, “her tongue was cut out.”

“God! I hope he didn’t do that to her while she was still alive.”

“She was dead, or there would have been even more blood. And maybe we’d have gotten lucky and she might have bitten him. That would have given us some DNA to work with. He’s one careful killer, Quinn.”

“And angry.”

“The tongue might have been removed by the same knife he used to skin her. Actually, it did a neat job, like it had a hook blade and was made expressly for removing tongues.”

“People eat calves’ tongues. Do slaughterhouses use a special kind of knife to remove them?”

“I don’t know. Your department. Go question some cows. If you don’t have any more questions, I’m going to terminate our conversation, Quinn. I got another hot date waiting. Well, cool date.”

“I’ll call you if I think of anything,” Quinn said.

“I was just about to suggest that,” Nift said, and broke the connection.

The street door opened with a draft of warm air, and Fedderman came in wearing his brand-new suit and a fresh white shirt. He walked like a model in need of a runway. “There’s no Nathan Devliner in the New York phone directories,” he said.

“No surprise there,” Quinn said.

“Also, I talked with all the residents in Candice Culligan’s building. Nada for my efforts.” He strutted over and poured himself a mug of coffee, careful not to drip anything on his sleeve. “What the animal did to her couldn’t have made much noise.”

Fedderman went to his desk and slouched in his chair, ruining the suit’s effect so that he was once again the familiar Fedderman. Quinn told him about Nift’s phone call.

“Cut her tongue out?” Fedderman’s face screwed up as if his own tongue ached in sympathy.

“ ’Fraid so,” Quinn said. “Nift said the Skinner did a neat job of it. Probably with the same knife that inflicted the other wounds. Happened after she was dead. Killer probably knew there’d be too much blood if he tried it while she was still alive. Besides that, she might have managed to bite him.”

“Killer’s smart,” Fedderman said. “He leaves us nothing to work with except what he chooses. Sends us the way he wants us to go.”

“Toward Socrates’s Cavern,” Quinn said. “The members’ names written in blood, the letter S on or near the victims, maybe even a victim resembling a sacrificial animal… it all points too clearly in that direction. By now the killer must know we’re not buying into it.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Fedderman said. “He might think we’re not very smart.”

“I can’t imagine what would give him that idea,” Quinn said, “except he’s getting away with murder.”

“Maybe he believes in ghosts. All the suspects he’s given us are dead.”

Fedderman stood up from his chair in seemingly disjointed sections, the way he always did; even the Armani suit couldn’t disguise that. He walked over to the rack and removed his suit coat, then draped it carefully on a hanger.