John Lutz - Mister X

Its front bumper struck her hard enough to toss her body forward into an awkward cartwheel. She landed almost completely on the grass median, but not quite. Her head struck the curb, and she lay motionless with arms and legs splayed.

The driver was out of the cab and kneeling alongside her within seconds. He crossed himself, stood up, and moved hunched over onto the grass and vomited.

Fedderman was next on the scene, sliding to a stop and standing with his long arms dangling at his sides, gulping air and staring down at the woman's face.

Quinn ran faster as he got closer, even though pain sliced through his legs and burned like molten lead in his lungs. In his heart. All his attention was concentrated on the woman sprawled at the edge of the median.

Who are you?

Who are you?

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet Stand before a glass and tie my tie. -CONRAD AIKEN, "Morning Song"

Quinn joined the group huddled around the woman lying partly on the grassy median of Park Avenue and partly in the street. She wasn't moving, and there was a lot of blood puddled along with rainwater around her head.

Quinn stood in the cool mist and found himself looking down at the face of the woman who'd impersonated Chrissie Keller, the client who'd hired him in the first place and set all the pieces in motion. The woman who wasn't Chrissie Keller. Not according to Chrissie's mother, anyway.

Fedderman was kneeling next to her, feeling for a pulse.

He found one.

"Not dead," he said, sounding somewhat surprised. Her bloody head injury suggested something serious enough to be fatal. But then head injuries tended to bleed a lot.

"Could have fooled me," a uniformed cop from the patrol car said.

Quinn had to agree. The woman was pale, her eyes closed, with no apparent movement beneath the lids. Her features were peaceful and composed, and there seemed already to be about her the waxlike stillness of the dead.

"We got a call in for EMS?" Quinn asked.

"They're on the way," Mishkin said.

Fedderman peeled off his wrinkled suit coat and laid it over the woman, as if, since he'd been the one to run her to ground, he was responsible for her. Quinn understood. It could be that way sometimes, and logic had nothing to do with it.

Sirens were closing in, and an ambulance preceded by two more radio cars turned the wide corner onto Park Avenue. They put on quite a light show.

While Fedderman was straightening up from spreading his coat, Quinn noticed something lying in the street, pinned partly beneath the woman's right thigh, as if it might have fallen from a pocket or had been tucked beneath her sweatshirt. He pointed, and Fedderman dipped low on shaky knees and pulled the object free. It was a small, zippered purse with a faded beaded design on it.

They backed away from the body and let the paramedics take over, two husky guys with incredibly gentle hands, charged with getting the injured woman to a hospital.

Fedderman handed the purse to Quinn, who unzipped it and examined its contents. There was a wadded tissue (as there seemed to be in every woman's purse he'd ever examined), comb, lipstick, pen, notepad, cell phone, and worn leather wallet.

Quinn searched through the wallet. Sixty-four dollars in bills. Credit cards in the name of Lisa Bolt. A Blue Cross card. Various other forms of identification, including an Ohio driver's license, all in the same name. And there was a dog-eared business card that surprised Quinn.

Stuffing everything back in the wallet, then the wallet back in the purse, Quinn handed the bundle to Fedderman, along with his car key.

"Our shadow woman and mystery client is one Lisa Bolt," he said, "a private detective from Columbus, Ohio. Take the purse and stay with her at the hospital, Feds. Use my car. I'll ride with Sal and Harold and catch up with you there later."

The paramedics were unfolding a gurney with practiced efficiency and would soon have the woman in the ambulance.

One of them had a roll of thick blankets tucked under his arm. Better than a body bag, Fedderman thought. He recovered his damp suit coat. Holding it and the purse well away from him in one hand, he began trotting back toward the parked Lincoln.

Over his shoulder he yelled back at Quinn, "You better call Pearl."

It was as much a warning as a suggestion.

While he watched Lisa Bolt being loaded into the ambulance, Quinn called Pearl on his cell. She wouldn't like being woken at 2:10 in the morning. She'd like it even less if he didn't wake her.

He remembered her saying Yancy Taggart was on a lobbying junket or some such and she'd be at her apartment.

Pearl's home number was familiar enough to Quinn that he didn't bother with speed dial. He pecked it out rapidly without even having to glance at his phone's keypad.

Pearl ran true to form. She didn't at all like it when the chirping of the phone near her bed dragged her up from uneasy dreams. She pulled the damned, noisy thing to where she could grasp the receiver, fitted cool plastic to her ear, and emitted a sound something like a growl.

"Pearl?"

Quinn's voice. She squinted at the luminous numerals on her clock. Said, "Who the hell did you think?"

"Sounded like something fighting for food," Quinn said.

"Fighting for sleep," she said. Then in a clearer, deliberately more alert voice, knowing something important must have happened or was happening: "So why'd you call me as if I were somewhere in Europe where it'd be much later but still too early to call if it wasn't damned important?"

"I didn't follow that," Quinn said. "How about if you tell me your Social Security number so I know you're wide enough awake to understand what I'm saying?"

Pearl expended considerable effort and sat up in bed. The old Social Security number thing. It went back to their early days together. She knew Quinn would keep picking at her until he was sure she was all the way awake before he unloaded on her.

She said, "Forget my Social. Get to the goddamned point."

Quinn did, filling her in on the Lilly Branston murder and the Lisa Bolt development.

"Why the hell didn't you call me?" Pearl said when he was finished.

"I just did call you."

"I mean earlier."

"It's two-fifteen a.m., Pearl. There is no earlier."

"You know what I mean."

"I wanted at least one detective tomorrow who was more than half awake. Then things developed fast, and I didn't have time. Get dressed. I'll find out what hospital Lisa Bolt's gonna be in and call you back on your cell so we can meet up there."

"If she's our shadow woman, make sure somebody keeps a close watch on her so she doesn't disappear again."

"If she disappears this time," Quinn said, "it'll be where nobody can follow. See you soon, Pearl. And, oh yeah, call Addie Price and alert her to what's going on."

"Yeah," Pearl said, "I'll be sure and do that."

She hung up the phone and then climbed out of bed and stumbled through darkness toward where she knew the door to the hall and the bathroom was located.

The geography of the night escaped her. She missed the door by several inches and stubbed her big toe so painfully she thought she might pass out. She stood still for a few minutes on one foot, propping herself dizzily on the door frame and holding the throbbing toe, uttering a string of obscenities that would certainly have earned the shock and disapproval of her mother.

The pain brought her all the way awake, and she got smart and flipped a light switch.

Owww!

There was her world in an abrupt illuminated clarity so brilliant that it hurt.

Squinting and blinder than before she'd flipped the wall switch, she limped on toward the bathroom, hoping not to stub the toe a second time. That would be unbearable. If that happened again…