John Lutz - Night kills

"Apartment's upstairs," Gloria explained, nudging the accelerator so the big Chrysler glided inside. "It's furnished better than the garage."

"Much better," David said. "And it doesn't smell like petroleum products." He bowed his head and kissed Shellie's just above the bridge of her nose.

The overhead door descended with a clatter and closed behind them. Gloria turned off the engine, and the garage was suddenly very quiet. The headlights were on time delay and stayed on. They deepened the shadows not directly in their twin beams.

In the dimness of the car's interior, Gloria glanced over her shoulder. "Be careful getting out and walking. There's a plastic drop cloth on the floor because the car leaks oil." The Chrysler's interior light came on, and before David or Shellie could move, Gloria climbed out of the car and threw a wall switch.

The light from two bare overhead bulbs didn't cheer up the garage at all. The carelessly stacked fifty-gallon barrels were rusty. The cardboard boxes were taped, unlabeled, and coated with dust. Leaning against them was a tall roll of something opaque, maybe more plastic sheeting. There were no windows.

David got out of the car before Shellie and held the door open for her, like a gentleman. She was still a little drowsy, unsteady, and needed his support.

"Before we go upstairs," he said, "I have a present for you."

"Present?" Shellie saw Gloria get an unfolded black umbrella from where it was leaning in the shadows by the boxes and lay it on the car's hood. The cooling engine began to tick.

"A surprise. Before we go upstairs for our drinks."

For a wild second Shellie thought he might mean the umbrella, but that didn't make sense.

The car's headlights winked off, making the garage even gloomier. Shellie glanced around and didn't see an elevator. No stairs, either. There must be a door somewhere leading to an elevator or stairwell.

"Let's go upstairs and get comfortable and you can surprise her," Gloria said. She was smiling at Shellie, her dark eyes intense. Whatever light there was in the garage, they reflected.

"Better right here," David said, and again he kissed Shellie on the forehead. His lips felt cool.

"Stubborn," Gloria said, shaking her head. "I guess that's why you love him."

"One reason," Shellie said. She really did love David. More than anyone or anything at any time in her life.

Stepping back, David smiled down at her and reached into a pocket of his suit coat. Beyond him, Shellie noticed Gloria reaching for the umbrella as if to open it.

She didn't open it. Instead, she withdrew a long, pointed wooden shaft that had been concealed inside it.

"Close your eyes, darling," David said.

But Shellie didn't. Even through her wine-induced drowsiness and love and trust for David, the feeling of security she always had in his presence, she realized something was very wrong. A tingle of fear played up her spine.

Foolish. Why should I be frightened? He's here.

His hand emerged from his pocket not with a piece of jewelry or a gift box, but holding a small gun.

"David?"

He shot her through the heart.

She dropped to a sitting position, her legs straight out, and then toppled backward. He immediately took two steps, leaned down, and shot her again, twice, through the forehead.

Gloria tossed him the pointed shaft so it remained vertical in the air, as if she were a dancer tossing her partner a cane. Matching her stagecraft, he snatched it neatly with one hand. He felt the point with his index finger, testing for sharpness.

Gloria walked around closer to stand next to him over Shellie's dead body.

"Look at her face," she said. "She was surprised. You didn't disappoint her."

"I never disappoint the ladies," David said.

He bent low with the sharpened section of broomstick, and then slowly straightened up without it.

Gloria was breathing hard as she stared down at the foot or so of wood protruding from Shellie.

"Don't you ever wonder, David, how it would be if you didn't wait until they were-?"

"Grab the other end of this plastic sheet and let's move her so we can get busy."

"For everything there is a purpose under the heavens," Gloria said, still staring at the protruding section of broomstick. "Sometimes more than one purpose."

"Aside from your cynicism, this is no time to go biblical on me."

"It's exactly the time," she said, grinning. "And you didn't answer my question."

"Only an arm," medical examiner Dr. Julius Nift said, kneeling alongside the pale object before him on the wet bricks. "Yet look at the attention it's attracted. Some show. I wish somebody would give us a hand."

Pearl despised Nift and his callous sense of humor, but she said nothing, because, sick jokes aside, she agreed with him. A hand would mean fingerprints. She wasn't sure how much this arm that had been fished from the East River would be able to help them.

Nift continued to probe and examine the arm. He was a short, chesty man inflated by self-importance who dressed more like a banker than a doctor who spent a lot of time with corpses. He wore his black hair combed forward, resulting in sparse bangs that made him look Napoleonic. That was how Pearl thought of him, as a crude, cynical Napoleon. It was lucky the little bastard didn't have an army.

Quinn, standing a few feet away with Fedderman, gnawed his lower lip as he stared down at the handless severed arm. It had obviously been in the water a long time. He glanced around, squinting in the early afternoon sunlight. They were near Sutton Place, home of some of the most expensive real estate in New York. It wasn't likely the arm belonged to any of the neighbors. A missing arm in Sutton Place wasn't the sort of thing to go unreported.

The arm had been spotted by a Mrs. Grace Oliphant, while walking her Yorkshire terrier, Clipper. She'd noticed something pale snagged on some deadwood that had drifted up against the bank and thought at first it was a large, dead fish. She skirted a black iron fence and moved closer. Clipper began barking frantically, and she wasn't so sure she was looking at a dead fish. It was the forty-five-degree crook in the blanched object that made her peer more intensely and with fearful curiosity. There was something about the thing, something that reminded her of…an elbow.

Mrs. Oliphant straightened up immediately and backed away, nauseated, tugging at the leash to get Clipper away from the dreadful thing. The arm. It was no wonder the dog had been barking so frantically. He must have picked up the terrible scent, realized before she did what they were looking at. Yorkies were so smart.

She gave the leash a firm yank, momentarily choking off Clipper's shrill barking, then looked him in the eye and shushed him so he'd stay quiet while she used her cell phone to call the police.

The uniforms who'd arrived first knew immediately they were looking at a human arm that had been severed at the elbow. Its hand had been cut off at the wrist. One of the cops picked up a branch and edged the arm closer to the concrete wall where the water lapped, then gingerly inched it up and over and onto the bricks. He didn't like touching it, even with a branch, but he knew he had to move it before it broke free from where it was snagged and floated away, or maybe sank.

The water had blanched away most of the color, leaving the arm a dull white. The uniforms could see how the woman who'd called thought at first she'd been looking at a dead fish. There was some obvious damage from what lived in the river nibbling at the arm. Gleaming white bone showed beneath flaps of skin at both ends.

Both cops knew about the Torso Murders and recognized the possible significance of the arm. The police investigated weird things found in New York rivers almost every week, and those were only the ones that were reported. Still, human remains…and with the sicko on the loose killing and cutting up his victims…it was a situation that called for diligence.