John Lutz - Serial

He glanced back at Pearl, then straightened the stack of black-and-white photos and placed them on the coffee table. Pearl came around and sat in a chair facing him.

“I was studying those wavering cuts in her torso and thighs,” Quinn said.

“We both were.”

“See anything to them? I mean, in the way of some message being communicated?”

“The message I get is that the Skinner is one sick cookie. Sick and sadistic.”

Quinn sighed and leaned back in the sofa. “What kind of knife do you supposed made those cuts?”

“Something sharp and with a fine point. Probably made for a specific purpose. A specialty scalpel?”

“Nift says no. He doesn’t think the killer’s using any sort of medical implement. But he does admit he can’t be certain.”

“Maybe something for cleaning fish.”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” Quinn said.

“Maybe it’s simply another diversion. We are all agreed that the business with the Socrates’s Cavern membership list and letter S are simply that. Not to mention the shoe in the mouth.”

“Diversions, but we’re still forced to waste time checking them out.”

“So maybe we’re supposed to run around in circles trying to figure out what the fancy cut marks on the victims mean. Or maybe they mean nothing.”

“One distinction,” Quinn said. “The killer seems to have enjoyed carving designs in Judith Blaney. He apparently spent a lot of time doing it.”

“I get you,” Pearl said. “It’s his pleasure as well as a diversion.” She sat back and thought. “The wrong rapist identification factor-now that’s a solid connecting thread. I’m sure we’ll find it in Judith Blaney’s murder.”

“That’s what the killer wanted to conceal in the beginning,” Quinn said. “He must have known we’d eventually tumble to it.”

“You don’t suppose,” Pearl said, “that he’s using the rape misidentifications the same way he used the Socrates’s Cavern diversion.”

“You mean there might be a third, actual motive? You’re making my head hurt, Pearl.” But he had to admire her mind’s reach. “It would require too many victims,” he added. “The risk increases with each one.”

“He’s a psycho,” Pearl said. “He might not have done a risk analysis and determined a point of diminishing returns.”

“Oh, I bet he did. In fact, I think we can rely on it.”

She gave Quinn a level stare. A lock of her dark hair dangled near her left eye, giving her a tousled, sexy look. “Are we getting closer?” Her voice seemed slightly husky.

He didn’t want to misunderstand her. “To the killer?”

“Of course.” Her strictly business voice now.

He stared at her. She didn’t seem to have noticed the double entendre. Or maybe she had and was playing dumb. He wished she’d spend the afternoon with him in bed so he could make love to her, try again to convince her that she should move in with him. Yancy Taggart had died long enough ago that his memory no longer stood in the way. Quinn was reasonably sure of that. If only she could make up her mind. Her heart.

“I feel that we are getting closer,” Quinn said, “but I couldn’t tell you why.”

A persistent high-pitched dinging drifted from the kitchen. The oven timer.

“Pearl,” Quinn said, “do you want to stay here after lunch? Maybe spend the night?”

“The lasagna’s ready,” Pearl said. “I’m not.”

When they were almost finished with lunch, the brownstone phone rang.

Nift again.

“I thought I should mention what else I discovered when I cleaned all the blood out of Judith Blaney’s mouth and throat,” he said.

Quinn looked at what was left of his lasagna.

“It seems her tongue was removed,” Nift said.

“Removed?”

“Cut out. Back near its base. Very deftly.”

Quinn said nothing.

“Am I calling at a bad time?” Nift asked.

“No, not at all. Thanks.” Quinn hung up the phone. He looked at Pearl.

“Anything important?” Pearl asked.

“I’ll tell you after you finish lunch,” Quinn said.

Marinara sauce dripped from a corner of Pearl’s mouth. Her tongue darted out and she licked it away. Shrugged. “Whatever.”

Pearl, Pearl…

Pearl was glad she’d drawn this assignment. She’d given her interview with Jock Sanderson a lot of thought. The way she figured it, they were already in the territory where the Skinner might assume the woman who was his main target, the focus of his revenge, would seem to be simply one in a line of Skinner victims, none distinguishable from the others. Thus none of the suspects would in any meaningful way be distinguishable from the others. At least that was how the killer would see it. When he thought his safety in numbers was adequate, he would kill the one true object of his rampage.

And of course, his one true object couldn’t be distinguished by being the last killed.

Perhaps that one true object had been Judith Blaney.

Sanderson seemed surprised to see Pearl, which struck her as odd, considering they had an appointment. Pearl wondered if he preferred that his questioner were a man. Maybe a woman seeking the killer of women made him uneasy. If so, all the better.

Afraid of women? Sometimes these creeps are deeply afraid.

Jock Sanderson was a medium-height man whose compact build made him appear shorter. It was Pearl’s experience that men with that physical characteristic were deceptively strong. But then Quinn was tall and rangy, and he was unusually strong even for his size. Pearl warned herself not to categorize people on the basis of small samplings; in her business that could prove fatal.

Sanderson had the kind of eyes that picked up the dominant color around them, and a full head of wavy black hair. He would have been downright handsome if there hadn’t been a crookedness to his features that spoiled the effect. He had a nice smile.

“Please come in,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his right arm to invite her grandly into his squalid apartment, as if he were a butler at a posh estate.

Well, the apartment wasn’t actually squalid. Though the furniture was a bit worn and mismatched, the place was clean and ordered. So much so, in fact, that Pearl pegged Sanderson for kind of a neatnik.

As she moved past him he did a nifty little dance to get out of her way, as if he wanted to stay on the perimeter of her attention but not too close.

Pearl crossed the living room and sat on a sofa draped with a rose-pattern slipcover. It reminded her of the sofa in her mother’s living room when she was a kid. There was what looked like a cigarette burn in it.

“Cool enough in here for you?” Sanderson asked, smiling for about the third time since she’d arrived. He had even white teeth that he obviously liked to flash.

“Just right,” Pearl said. Though it was past eleven and the morning hadn’t yet heated up, an old window unit was humming away on alert without the compressor engaged. There was a faint odor in the place, as if someone had recently been frying fish. She drew her notepad from a pocket of her linen jacket and found the pencil tucked inside its leather cover. She flipped to the first unmarked page. “You said on the phone that you already knew about Judith Blaney’s death.”

“True,” Sanderson said. “I always watch local news in the morning before I go to bed.” He sat perched on the substantial arm of a hulking chair covered with brown corduroy. “The murder of a beautiful woman. Another Skinner victim. That kind of thing doesn’t take long to make the news.”

“You said you watched the morning news ‘before’ going to bed?”

“True.” As if Pearl had gotten another one right. The white smile. “I work nights. Usually get home sometime around six in the morning. Then I shower, shave, eat a healthy breakfast, and go to bed.”