John Lutz - Mister X

She watched his handsome face as he studied the photo. If he did recognize Branston, there was no sign of it.

He handed the photo back to Pearl. "She looks vaguely familiar, but I don't think I know her."

"Her name's Lilly Branston."

He looked a little less blank.

"She's the Carver's latest murder victim."

He looked genuinely surprised and then smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Jesus! Yes. Of course. I think I might have seen that photo-or one like it. There's a bulletin board in the subway stop. It's got her name and photo on it. Said something about her being missing, I thought."

"No," Pearl said, "must be another woman on the subway wall. Lilly Branston isn't missing. We know right where she is-in the morgue."

Levin made an ineffective pass at looking appropriately grieved, and then he appeared puzzled.

"What?" he asked. "I should care more than I do?"

"I don't know how much you care."

"Not much, tell you the truth. Of course I feel sorry for the victim, but I don't get overemotional about that kind of thing. I mean, about a woman I never met. Is there some connection with me? Did she live around here?"

"Not far away." Pearl placed her water glass on a cork coaster, part of a stack placed for convenience on the coffee table. The table was oak and gave the impression that it might be antique and expensive. "Have you ever used the services of an Internet matchmaking company called Coffee and Conversation?"

She watched the changes in his eyes. He was thinking furiously. Wondering how he might possibly be involved. Or wondering how to lie so he'd seem uninvolved.

"That Lilly Branston!" he said.

"The dead one," Pearl said.

"She was next on a list of women I was going to get in touch with." Levin began to pace, three steps this way, three back, swiveling neatly on the plush carpet. The leather soles of his deck shoes looked as if they'd never been outside. "I didn't mean to lie to you. It came to me gradually who she is. Was. Lately I've looked at a lot of photos of a lot of women."

"So you've met a number of women through Coffee and Conversation."

"No, only two. I'm very selective. I've been divorced for three years. I've learned to be careful about my relationships. Maybe too careful." He made a sweeping motion with an arm to take in the vast, well-furnished living room. "As you can see, I'm what you'd call more than reasonably wealthy."

"You're concerned that women might be after your money instead of you?"

"Yes. But only insofar as they might turn out to be a waste of my time. Fact is, I wouldn't want a woman who didn't at least take my wealth into consideration. I like very smart, very aggressive women. When I saw that Lilly Branston was a real estate agent with the Willman Group, I knew she had to be both those things." Levin tried a smile. "Have you ever noticed how aggressive female real estate agents are?"

"Like female cops," Pearl said.

He gave her a speculative up-and-down look. "I do read the papers. It's interesting that a cop who's the serial killer's type-and quite beautiful, I will add-is searching for the monster. Kind of like the baitfish seeking the shark."

"We won't go to that part of the ocean," Pearl said. "We were talking about your search for a soul mate."

"Yes. Anyway, what I liked about Coffee and Conversation was that, if things didn't work out after your first meeting, there were no loose ends. I mean, nobody had anybody's address or phone number. Maybe not even their real name. They had only rudimentary information, and maybe the photo that was on the C and C website, and that was it. Nobody was going to…"

"Stalk you?"

"Not so much that. More cling to me. I've found women to be clingy."

"You're not short on ego."

"No, I am not. But I do attract women on the hunt. That's why the C and C concept appealed to me. You contact C and C, and if the other party is willing, they set up a time and date for coffee and a get-acquainted meeting. You are literally strangers when you meet. If either of you so chooses, you can keep it that way."

"Did your meetings with the first two women on your list go any further than caffeine and conversation?"

"No. I think I was way too aggressive for them."

"You didn't mention their names."

He gave Pearl two names that she jotted in her notepad. She would check later and make sure they were C and C clients.

Pearl placed her notepad and pencil in her lap. "When you say you were 'too aggressive,' do you mean sexually? In your sexual practices?"

Levin stopped pacing and appeared genuinely shocked. "No, no, nothing like that. What I mean is that I don't apologize for wanting to make even more money, for wanting even more prestige and power. More of everything. It's part of Darwinism, part of being human. Too many people don't accept that. You'd be surprised how many women out there want to turn the world green, or spray paint people wearing fur coats, or eat nothing but arugula lettuce and beans-and all to the exclusion of everything else." He looked sincerely at Pearl. "Detective, I don't give a flying flip if the world is two degrees hotter in twenty years or if the ocean rises six inches. I want to be the guy who gets rich building dikes."

Pearl looked at him. Hoo, boy!

"So you were what…too honest for those women?"

He laughed. "You might call it that. I don't want to get involved with any woman under false pretenses. Best to get our beliefs and ambitions out there in the beginning. Do I want to be fantastically wealthy and take over the world? Be the king of everything? Sure, if the opportunity presents itself."

"Are you legally sane?" Pearl asked.

At first she thought he was going to get mad, but he simply laughed again. "We both know I can't answer that one, so why did you ask it?"

"You, uh, remind me of someone." She picked up her notebook again and glanced at what she'd jotted down. "Did you meet either or these women night before last?"

"Sure did." He gave Pearl the woman's name, which she underlined. "We spent three hours learning about each other in the Weekly Grind coffee shop, and then we had a late supper and strolled around the city for a while. Till well past midnight, actually."

"Sounds romantic. You must have hit it off at least somewhat."

"I thought so. Three lattes' worth, anyway. She even gave me her phone number, but when I called yesterday she said she'd thought about it and didn't want to carry the relationship any further. It was because I'd kicked at a stray cat while we were walking. The thing might have had rabies, for all we knew. She confessed she was a member of PETA. I told her I liked animals and would join PETA myself, but it didn't impress her."

"Maybe for some reason she thought you were being insincere."

"But I do like animals. Enough, anyway."

"Maybe it was the caffeine talking. Do you still have her phone number?"

"I think so, sure." He walked to where a phone sat on a table near the foyer and flipped the top page of a stack of yellow Post-its. He read a phone number to Pearl. "You can call and check. She'll verify what I assume is my alibi."

"I will," Pearl said, writing down the number

"That's when Lilly Branston was killed, wasn't it? When I was with my C and C friend?"

"That's the time frame," Pearl said. "By the way, did you lie about not recognizing Lilly Branston when I showed you her photo?"

"No, no! The photo really didn't ring a bell. Then I did mistake her for some woman whose photo is in the subway stops. But when I heard you say her name, it all came into focus."

She asked him about his whereabouts at the times of the other Carver murders. He couldn't remember where he was during most of them, but he was out of town at a shareholders' meeting at the time of Joyce House's murder. Witnesses and charge account statements would back him up.