John Lutz - Mister X

"She must feel she has to do this."

"She feels that way right now," Pearl said.

"She won't change her mind," Edith said.

"Her check will clear," Quinn said. "I called her bank to make sure there were sufficient funds."

They were in the office, wondering why they couldn't get in touch with Chrissie Keller at either of the phone numbers she'd given them. A message machine answered at one number, but the messages didn't seem to get through. The other number was to a cell phone and elicited nothing but a high-pitched squeal.

"What about the check for the Sammy's job?" Pearl asked.

"It's good, too. I made sure."

"We're rich," Fedderman said.

"Solvent," Quinn said.

"So why can't we get in touch with Chrissie?" Pearl asked.

"Maybe she's one of those clients who figures she'll be the one to decide when we report," Fedderman said.

"Control freak," Pearl said.

"I hate those," Quinn said.

Pot, kettle, Pearl thought, and congratulated herself for staying quiet.

"If she doesn't contact us in a day or two, we can start to wonder," Quinn said. "Until then, we stay on the case. More interviews with victims' friends and family." He glanced from Pearl to Fedderman. "You two have any luck?"

"Not so's you'd notice," Pearl said.

Even as she spoke, she realized there was something about the case that she hadn't yet noticed. It played like a bashful shadow just beyond the borders of her consciousness.

Pearl and Fedderman handed Quinn copies of their interview notes for the files, then in matter-of-fact tones told him about their reinterviewing of people close to the Carver victims. Other than the usual contradictions that could be put down to the passage of time and erosion of memory, there didn't seem to be many discernable differences between these interviews and those done years ago. Nothing that might be construed as a lead.

Quinn considered lighting a cigar but didn't. Pearl would raise hell. She hated it when he or anyone else smoked in the office.

He thought about Chrissie Keller, the way she'd come into the office. Something about her. He was getting a bad feeling about what they'd gotten into, where it might be heading. A deep sensation in his stomach that was seldom off the mark.

"Some of the friends and family didn't like being taken back to that time," Fedderman said. "You could see it in their faces, and it made your heart sad."

"That's what these assholes start," Quinn said. "It goes on for years. Sometimes for generations."

"There's still a lot of breakage there," Pearl said. "A lot of hatred." But that was what she'd expected to find. She knew Quinn was right: Untimely, violent death resonated for decades.

"Let's check these statements in detail with the earlier ones," Quinn said. "Then we can do some more reinterviewing."

"Revive some more pain," Fedderman said sadly.

"Blame the aforementioned asshole," Quinn said.

It was when Pearl was integrating the new statements into the files that she realized what had been nagging at the edges of her mind. She reached for her folder containing the copies of the newspaper clippings that had been left by Chrissie Keller.

She leafed through the clippings and stopped at those concerning Chrissie's twin, Tiffany.

Pearl was right in what had occurred to her. She felt the flush of satisfaction that was what she loved most about this work.

"There are photos of all the victims until we get to victim number five, the Carver's last victim," she said. "Tiffany Keller. Lots of clippings, but none with a photograph."

Quinn and Fedderman checked their own copies.

No photos of Tiffany.

"Coincidence?" Fedderman asked. Thinking, Yeah, sure. Like most cops, he wasn't much of a believer in coincidence.

"It doesn't seem likely that Tiffany's murder would generate all those news items without a photo," Pearl said.

Quinn did his backward tilt in his desk chair and went into his casual balancing act, damn near tipping. "A young, attractive victim, sexually mutilated. There'd be plenty of photographs."

He watched Pearl go at it, like a hound on the scent, though she wouldn't like the comparison. She already had her computer booted up and was online, feeding Tiffany Keller's name into her browser.

It took only a few moments to search the New York papers' archives for related items.

Unsurprisingly, Tiffany's mutilation and death at the hands of the Carver had been a major news story. And as Quinn had thought, the gory details of the crime were accompanied by plenty of vivid photographs of the young, attractive victim.

"I'll be damned," Pearl said.

"Photos?" Quinn asked.

"Lots of them."

"Chrissie must have culled out the news clippings accompanied by photos," Fedderman said.

Pearl shook her head. "That's not what I mean."

Quinn and Fedderman moved closer so they could see her computer's monitor without glare.

Quinn felt the sensation in his stomach gain in intensity.

The screen showed what looked like a high school yearbook photo of a pretty, dark-haired girl with a broad grin and slightly uptilted brown eyes that suggested potential mischief. It was a potential never realized in a life cut short by the Carver.

The caption beneath the photo was simply the subject's name: Tiffany Keller.

Tiffany looked nothing like her twin who had hired Quinn and Associates to find her killer.

"This is crazy," Pearl said, as they crossed West Forty-fourth Street toward the Sherman Hotel.

Quinn silently agreed with her. But sometimes it was a crazy world with its own kind of whatever passed for logic.

"We're interrupting looking for a killer so we can search for our client," Pearl said.

"I told you, her check cleared," Quinn said. He hastened his pace to get across the heated concrete street before a white pickup truck leading a convoy of yellow cabs reached them. "That means we're still working for her." The line of vehicles hummed and rattled past behind them, stirring a warm breeze around their ankles.

"A cashier's check," Pearl said, when they were safely up on the sidewalk. "Which means we have no way to trace her through her checking account."

"If you're suggesting we should have been suspicious of her from the get-go," Quinn said, "you're right. I don't know how it happened, Pearl, but we've both become too trusting."

Pearl knew sarcasm when she heard it, so she bit her lip and held her silence.

It wasn't smart to cross Quinn when he was being sarcastic. It could mean he was getting angry with himself, which was when he was his most difficult with other people. So Pearl simply followed him silently through a heavily tinted glass revolving door into the welcome coolness of the Sherman Hotel's marble and oak lobby.

The Sherman was an old hotel in a difficult phase of renovation while remaining open. That brought the rates down, so there was no dearth of business despite the cordoned-off areas of the lobby where the floor was torn up, or the closed restaurant necessitating eating at the diner on the corner. The Sherman was small but had a shabby elegance about it that was being resurrected to something like its original state. Besides all the oak wainscoting and the veined marble floor and columns, there was a lot of fancy crown molding, and what looked like the original long, curved oak registration desk. Some of the black leather furniture and the potted palms placed about the lobby appeared to be new. Pearl couldn't help looking for price tags on the plants.

When Quinn and Pearl approached the desk they were greeted by a tall, elderly man in a gray sport jacket with what must be the Sherman's crest over its left breast pocket. He had thick white hair and a long, lean face with a patrician nose that was made for him to look down over. The sort of chap who would have seemed right at home in a venerable British men's club.