John Lutz - Serial

The problem was that Stopp’s fingerprints were in the apartment where Tanya was raped. It was an unoccupied furnished apartment and he maintained that he’d gone into it a week ago to examine it because he was thinking about renting someplace larger. The super confirmed this, but so what? The bed was unmade, sheets a tangle, and it was obvious that the rape had occurred. If it wasn’t Stopp who’d drugged and attacked Tanya, where was the real rapist?

And who could substantiate that Stopp had been alone in his apartment, and not in the other that he’d known was vacant and had chosen as a convenient place to commit his crime?

Of course, Stopp’s insurmountable problem was that Tanya positively identified him as one of the men she’d been with earlier that night at the bar. One of the bartenders, though less certain, had also identified him. A sympathetic jury, an enthusiastic prosecutor, an inept defense attorney, and the evidence, all added up to a fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence for Tom Stopp.

That had all happened ten years ago, to a young and naive Tanya Moody. She was older now, a self-supporting woman with a business of her own.

Tom Stopp was older, too. He was a forty-year-old ex-con who’d been exonerated by DNA evidence collected at the time of Tanya’s rape and stored for over a decade in an evidence box. He’d been released last year and was free.

Someone else had raped Tanya Moody, and he, too, was free somewhere.

The police had talked to Tanya about Stopp when he was released, and said he was living now in New Jersey and seemed to bear her no animosity. Also, he had alibis for at least two of the Skinner torture murders.

They warned Tanya to be careful, and to call them if she so much as caught a glimpse of Tom Stopp anywhere near her.

Only it wasn’t Stopp who’d been following her lately. And she doubted if the man was her actual rapist. He looked nothing like any of the men in the bar that night, and he would simply have no reason to step back into her life after ten years. He could rape some other woman with much less risk.

The Skinner murders, and the strange man she at least thought might be stalking her, had brought back to the top of her memory the time of the rape. She’d assumed that she’d purged herself of that night, or at least left it as a part of the past she had no need to revisit. But the man she kept glimpsing on the subway, and on the sidewalks, had become a regular visitor to her dreams.

Tanya owned a small. 22-caliber handgun that she used to carry in her purse. She’d obtained it illegally as a gift from a man she’d dated after the trial, and for years it had lain wrapped in an oily rag in a steel lockbox at the back of her closet’s top shelf.

A week ago she’d gotten the gun down, checked it to make sure it was in working order, and again began carrying it. She knew it was against the law, but screw the Sullivan Act. When her life was at stake, the only law that mattered was survival. Tanya also had a tiny canister of mace in her purse, and she’d taken kickboxing lessons. But she knew the kind of uphill struggle the strongest of women might have with the weakest of men. The gun gave her comfort.

She didn’t think she had enough evidence to contact the police about the man who seemed to be too often near her. And she didn’t know how they’d find the man to talk to him, unless they assigned an undercover cop to tag along with her for days until she could point him out. Obviously they weren’t going to do that. And after costing Tom Stopp years of his life, Tanya didn’t like the idea of positively identifying anyone for any reason. The human eye was an unreliable partner to memory.

All Tanya could do was wonder if the man actually was following her.

And, if so, why?

And be ready.

I’ll make my Joy a secret thing,

By noon Quinn had pretty much given up on tracing the Skinner through the recorded purchase of a carpet-tucking knife. The search was further complicated when they learned that building supply stores sometimes sold such knives as part of a tool set.

The good piece of news was that Weaver was being released from the hospital. She wasn’t completely healed, but she was out of insurance and scheduled to become an outpatient. Aside from her mother in Pittsburgh, Weaver had a sister in Philadelphia who was a hospital administrator. Common sense and simple economics dictated that Weaver should spend the rest of her recuperation in Philadelphia.

Quinn picked up Weaver just before noon at the hospital and drove her by her apartment to pack, then to LaGuardia, where the good sister had reserved a seat on an American Airlines flight. He thought Weaver looked okay but still acted somewhat out of it. She kissed him on the mouth before she joined the security checkpoint line, and glanced back at him as she passed through the metal detector. Something about the glance suggested they would never see each other again.

All in all, her departure made Quinn feel like crap. Despite the hour, he used his cell phone to invite Jerry Lido to lunch. He knew what lunch was to Lido, and it was the kind of lunch Quinn felt like having today.

Quinn was supposed to meet Pearl for dinner before they went home to the brownstone. She sat alone at a diner table, sipping decaffeinated coffee that was catching up with her because she was on her third cup. Pearl figured three cups of decaf equaled about one cup of strong regular grind. Enough to keep her awake at night.

She knew Quinn had gone to lunch with Jerry Lido, and she knew what kind of lunch that could become.

Damn Quinn!

By the time she thought to check her cell phone, she felt as if she was swimming in coffee.

Uh-oh. Quinn had called and somehow she hadn’t heard the phone. He hadn’t left a voice message, but he’d called again and texted her. The text message mentioned his name, but after that made no sense whatsoever. Quinn hadn’t used his cell phone for that call. She knew it was because he barely knew how to send a text message. She saw that the call had been from Jerry Lido’s phone.

That explained a lot of things.

Pearl paid for the bottomless cup of coffee and went outside to hail a cab.

Pearl had to knock on Jerry Lido’s door for a long time. A woman with an odd brown hairdo that made her look like a spaniel opened a door across the hall and glared at Pearl. Pearl returned the glare. The woman shook her head and ducked back inside.

When Pearl looked back she saw that her knocking had been answered. The apartment door was open. Jerry Lido stood there wearing pants and the kind of sleeveless undershirt some people called a wife-beater. He was barefoot and smelled like gin. Behind him, across the living room, Quinn was snoring away on a sofa. He was dressed something like Lido but wearing a tangled tie. There was a Gilby’s bottle on a coffee table. Three more bottles on the floor. Pearl felt as if she’d disturbed two hibernating bears.

“I see you had a party today,” she said.

“More like a tete-a-tete,” Lido said, surprising Pearl with his vocabulary and elocution. Especially since he was obviously still drunk.

“Looks more like you two rolled down a hill.” She stepped inside and got another whiff of Lido’s breath. “Are you still drinking?”

Lido shrugged. “A little hair of the frog.”

“You mean dog. Frogs don’t have hair.”

“Nor do they bark.”

Pearl went across the room and stared down at Quinn. He looked as bad as Lido, but his chest was rising and falling regularly. At least he’d stopped snoring.