John Lutz - Night kills

One of the uniforms had listened to Grace Oliphant's story and taken notes, while his partner called their lieutenant. Up the bureaucratic chain the information went, but in a way tightly controlled. Within fifteen minutes, Renz had called Quinn.

"Right or left arm?" Quinn asked Nift.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters because I asked you," Quinn said in a flat voice that had unnerved hundreds if not thousands of suspects.

It didn't seem to unnerve Nift, armored as he was by ego. Still, he decided it was time to be businesslike. He pressed a forefinger to the side of his chin, striking a thoughtful pose, as he shifted slightly to peer at both ends of the arm. "I'd guess left, but I can't tell you for sure till we get this to the morgue and examine it more closely."

"How long's it been in the water?"

"I can only guess, but I'd say about a month."

Quinn figured it would belong to the first victim, if it was an arm from one of the mystery torsos. It almost had to be, he figured. Even in New York, it wasn't every day that the odd severed limb turned up. "Can you match it with either of the torsos we found?"

Nift glanced up at him with a confident, nasty smile. "With my skill, if it matches, I'll know. There'll be distinctive marks on the bone from the cleaver or hatchet. And comparable patterns in the way the flesh was cut away. Also, we should be able to match it by age to one of the torsos, if that's where it came from. And of course there's always DNA. Takes a while for a full report, but we might be able to hurry through a preliminary yes or no on a simple match."

A siren grew louder, then yodeled to silence, causing Clipper, held by Mrs. Oliphant, over by a small grouping of ornamental trees with orange berries, to fill the vacuum by emitting an earsplitting series of barks. A boxy vehicle with flashing lights had braked to a halt on the rise beyond steps leading to one of the pocket parks bordering the river at that point. Quinn could see a swing set and monkey bars and was glad some kid hadn't wandered down to the river and found the arm.

A white-uniformed paramedic jogged effortlessly down the concrete steps, then stepped over the low brick wall bordering the park and came toward them. While he was nimble, he was a chubby guy, holding a black rubberized zip case that looked like a portfolio an artist would carry samples in. Quinn figured there was no need for a stretcher here. The arm would fit in the case diagonally with room to spare.

The paramedic had dark hair combed severely sideways and a name patch that said JEFF.

He glanced around, noticed the black leather medical bag, and aimed an expectant smile at Nift. "Ready to remove?" He motioned with his head toward the pale arm on the bricks.

"I'm finished with it for now," Nift said.

Quinn nodded and stepped back, along with Pearl and Fedderman, and Jeff set to work.

"Careful with that," Nift told him as Jeff eased the arm into the case and worked the zipper. "It's part of a set."

Jeff didn't crack a smile.

Nobody was laughing in the office on Seventy-ninth Street. Quinn and Fedderman were seated at their desks, facing each other across the room. Pearl was perched on the edge of her desk with her legs crossed, sipping coffee. The office smelled strongly of overbrewed coffee, which was an improvement over the usual smell of sawdust and powdered plaster. The workmen doing the rehabbing on the floors above were sawing and hammering, destroying so they could create. The noise wasn't loud enough to be a bother, but it was almost constant.

Quinn had just hung up his desk phone. He sat staring at it for a long moment before speaking, as if it was a memory aid.

"The M.E. says the arm belonged to a woman in her early thirties, maybe five feet nine or ten. She was average weight. The swelling and loose flesh we saw was from exposure to the water. No distinguishing marks or jewelry." He leaned backward in his chair and crossed his arms. "Nift says the arm doesn't match either of the bodies."

"He sure?" Fedderman asked in a surprised voice.

"The little twit's always sure," Pearl said.

Quinn ignored her, as well as a burst of violent hammering. "Bones and flesh patterns don't match up, Feds. Also, we got a rush preliminary on DNA analysis. Enough info to know it doesn't match that of either of the two victims whose torsos we have. Even the blood type is different."

"We might still be able to find out who she was. The woman whose arm we found. What about a DNA database match?"

"The FBI's running it through its computers, but I don't think we can hold out much hope there."

Quinn knew the already vast database was still in its initial stages. The severed arm would have to belong to a woman who was a recently convicted felon and also had her DNA in the database. Those were long odds.

All three detectives sat silently and listened to the muffled hammering that punctuated the shrill cry of a power saw.

It was Pearl who finally said it. "We've got a third victim."

"Or else another killer who's dismembering bodies," Quinn said.

Fedderman noticed his shirt cuff was unbuttoned and fastened it. "Maybe the arm was cut off accidentally. By a boat propeller or something."

Quinn smiled wryly. "River patrol's got no reports of any such accident, and nobody's reported their arm missing."

"Third victim," Pearl said again.

Nobody disagreed with her.

"The killer chopped off her hand, too," Fedderman said.

"To be on the safe side and not risk fingerprints being lifted and compared someplace," Pearl said, "even if they're not on file. His cautious nature worked in this case."

Quinn sighed and stood up. "The rest of her might still be in the river. The rest of all of the victims might be there, or in some lake or tributary somewhere. I'll call Renz and see if we can get a search going, check bodies of water in or around New York."

"Grappling hooks," Pearl said. "That's how they drag a lake, with grappling hooks." Though she'd seen several such operations, the thought of this one, for some reason, chilled her. Hard steel seeking soft flesh in the dark.

"They use underwater cameras now, too," Quinn said.

"Divers," Fedderman said. "Eventually somebody's gotta swim down there in murky water and look for weighted-down arms, legs, and heads." He made a face and ran a hand over his almost nonexistent hair. "I'm glad I'm too old for that kinda stuff."

"They might drain some of the smaller lakes," Pearl told him.

He shook his head. "Yeah, but try draining the river. That's where we found the arm."

"He's got a point," Pearl said to Quinn.

"Global warming," Fedderman said. "Eventually it'll dry up all the rivers. That's when we'll find the missing body parts."

Pearl sipped her coffee.

"Global warming," Fedderman said again. "A cop's best friend."

"Severed arm?" Cindy Sellers asked into the phone. She was at her desk at City Beat. She kept her voice low so Howie Baker, at the next desk, wouldn't overhear. "Just an arm? How do we know it has anything to do with either of the two torso victims?"

"We know for sure it doesn't," Nift said nervously. He was calling with his cell phone a few blocks from the morgue. You never knew about phones. Just about any phone might not be secure these days. Not to mention cameras. They were getting to be all over the place in New York City. He wanted to get the call over with as soon as possible. "I can guarantee you that arm's not connected to either of the other victims' torsos."

"Obviously," Cindy said.

She was used to her informer's gruesome sense of humor and assumed that was what she was hearing. She thought Nift was a jerk, but he was reliable. And she'd been kind enough not to mention him in her expose of unlikely pornographic video rental customers. She had mentioned to him that she had photographs of some of the customers arriving at and leaving the video rental stores. She hadn't mentioned that, though Nift was observed renting a DVD about drunken coeds on a horse farm, he wasn't in any of the photos. Let him assume.