John Lutz - Night kills

"Good luck with it," Quinn said, and meant it. "Did you know Ruth well?"

"Very well. She's the one who recommended me for my apartment. This building rents to a lot of theater people."

"So you had mutual friends."

"Quite a few," Hettie said.

"Was Ruth involved with anyone?"

"Romantically? Sexually?"

"Either one," Quinn said, smiling.

"She broke off about four months ago with this guy she'd been seeing. Buddy Erb. He's an actor."

"Know where he can be found?"

"In L.A. He does the voice-over in that commercial where the frog recommends an insurance company and then drives an SUV off a cliff. You know the one?"

"Sure."

"Buddy does a great frog."

"Got that kinda voice," Quinn said. "They fight or anything when they broke up?"

"No, they just got tired of each other. It was pretty much over when Buddy got the job offer."

"The frog?"

"Yeah. Which meant he had to move to the West Coast."

"Yuck," Quinn said. "All that sun and surf."

Hettie gave him a look. She knew what he was doing, loosening her up, getting her to talk so maybe she'd yield a nugget of information. It was okay with her. She wanted the big, homely-handsome cop to catch the animal who had killed her friend.

The guy has an interesting face, Hettie thought. Rugged and memorable. And so, so trustworthy. He should have been an actor. Leading man. Not that he wasn't way too old for her…

Not that he wasn't an actor, in his own way.

"I know Buddy pretty well," she said. "He's an actor, not a killer. And from what I hear, his sexual needs are standard issue. If you check, I'm sure you'll find he was on the other side of the continent when Ruth was killed."

"We'll check. You know how we are." Quinn ran his fingertips over the sketch pad, as if trying to gain some knowledge about the sketches' creator. "Ruth date a lot?" he asked.

"Some. She liked men, but she was busy much of the time. Especially lately, what with Major Mary."

"You recall her mentioning anyone?"

"Since Buddy? No."

"Since Buddy, did she ever use a dating service?"

"I doubt it. Ruth was great to look at. Men liked her. If she wanted to go out, there was always somebody there."

"I don't want to sound like a TV cop-"

"You'd make a great TV cop."

"But did Ruth have any enemies whom you know of?"

"Everybody loved Ruth." Hettie gave him a sad grin. "More TV dialogue, but it happens to be true. She was a terrific and talented person. Even the sicko who killed her must have loved her in his own twisted way."

"How so?"

"He chose her, didn't he?"

Hettie had left, and Quinn was standing in the center of Ruth Malpass's apartment, slowly looking around, when Pearl came in.

"Anything from the neighbors?" he asked.

"Nothing useful. They all liked Ruth. She'd been seen coming and going with a man now and then. Nobody steady. Nobody lately. She was friendly-I heard the word sweet a lot-but pretty much kept to herself." Pearl glanced around the apartment. "Anything here?"

"Nothing unusual or helpful. Just like on her computer."

"Nobbler had it first. You think we saw everything that was on it?"

"You watched the file transfer. The tech whiz seem okay?"

"Yeah. Seemed."

"Then we probably got it all," Quinn said. "Nobbler'd be taking a hell of a risk tampering with that kind of evidence. And it'd take somebody who really knew computers to be sure whatever was deleted was really and truly gone from the disk for good. You know how it works."

"Yeah. E-mail is forever."

They both turned when they heard the door open.

Fedderman. He looked tired, and his brown suit was even more wrinkled than usual. He'd canvassed the top floors, while Pearl had worked the ones below. He didn't look happy.

"Any luck?" Quinn asked.

Fedderman shook his head.

"Probably not except maybe for the woman living right in the next unit, a loft apartment just like this one. Name's Emma McKenna. Real nice. Pretty enough to be an actress."

"She probably is an actress," Quinn said. "What did you learn from her."

"She was a good friend of Ruth's. According to her, they kind of looked out for one another. She said Ruth phoned her on what must have been the day she died and left a message on her machine. Said it probably wouldn't happen, but if a guy named Vlad came around looking for her, tell him he just missed her and get his phone number." Fedderman shrugged. "Emma didn't know anyone named Vlad and said Ruth never mentioned a Vlad before the phone message. So it probably means nothing."

Pearl said, "Holy Christ!"

Fedderman looked at her in surprise. "Huh?"

Quinn and Pearl both stared at him.

"What?" Fedderman asked.

Quinn said, "Don't you watch The History Channel?"

After explaining to Fedderman about Vlad the Impaler, they set to work doing a search of the names Vlad and Vladimir, using phone directories at first, then moving on to their computers.

In the five boroughs of New York City, there were a surprising number of Vlads and Vladimirs. The Vlads who showed up in the various criminal databases were for one reason or another unlikely suspects. One, who'd at first seemed a possibility, was in the Russian Mafia and had been killed last year in New Jersey.

Almost certainly the killer-if Vlad was the killer-wouldn't have used his real name. Still it was something that should be checked. Every ten years or so, something like this paid off. The drudge work of detection. Renz assigned a young cop named Nevins, fresh out of the academy, to do more extensive checking. He seemed enthusiastic.

Pearl stayed behind and helped Nevins, out of pity, while Quinn and Fedderman left the office to look over the vacant apartment Pearl had seen the new Madeline leaving.

Just in case she hadn't found what she might have gone there to retrieve.

"Happy hunting," Nevins said, as they went out the door.

Pearl rolled her eyes.

A white van with the peel-off magnetic sign of a painting company was parked in front of the building the new Madeline had lived in. Peel-off signs. Sometimes Quinn thought they'd been invented especially for the convenience of criminals.

Quinn and Fedderman decided not to bother with the super. They entered the building, pushed the elevator's "up" button, and didn't see a soul on their ascent to Madeline's floor.

They'd guessed right. The door down the hall that was propped open was to the new Madeline's unit. Quinn went in first. A rug-sized canvas drop cloth covered most of the living room floor. A guy in paint-splattered white coveralls was perched on the next-to-top step of an aluminum stepladder, using a brush to apply paint where ceiling and wall met. There was a pleasant but nose-tingling smell emanating from whatever kind of paint he was using. The new color was peach. Quinn would have preferred the previous white.

"Help you?" a woman's voice asked.

A young woman wearing white coveralls and a painter's cap stuck on top of a lot of carrot-colored hair came in from the kitchen. She was carrying a plastic bucket of spackling compound and a small trowel that looked as if it'd had a lot of use.

Quinn and Fedderman showed both painters their shields. They seemed satisfied. The one on the ladder set back to work. The woman was probably the boss.

"We want to take another look around the apartment," Quinn said.

"For clues?" Carrot top couldn't say it without smiling.

"Before you paint over them," Fedderman said.

She raised red eyebrows. "Was a crime committed here?"

"We don't know for sure where the murder took place," Quinn said. "That's what the clues would be about." There was no point in telling her the crime didn't occur in the apartment. Let her be impressed.