John Lutz - Mister X

Quinn glanced over at Pearl and caught her lowering her eyelids. She'd been staring over at him, curious.

"Okay," he said.

"What I called for," Fedderman said, "is Lisa Bolt is conscious."

"Is she-"

"She's slightly addled, but the doc says that's natural and there's no apparent brain damage. You know head injuries, how they bleed. It was bad, but not as bad as it looked. The rest of her's about healed up, too. She's in pretty good shape, Quinn, considering."

"What about her tongue?" Quinn saw Pearl glance over again.

"It can wag at us this afternoon, if we don't push her too hard."

Quinn looked at his watch. "It's afternoon now."

"So it is."

"See you shortly."

Quinn replaced the receiver and stood up behind his desk.

"Want to go for a drive?" he asked.

Pearl looked at him with her puffy eyes. "Where to?"

"The hospital. Lisa Bolt is awake."

A change came over Pearl's features. Within seconds, grief had given way to a hardness and determination. "Let's go."

"You sure you're up for this?"

"You sure you can stop me?"

"Actually," Quinn said, "I'm not."

As they were leaving, she turned back and lifted the vase of mortuary flowers. She deftly removed the tag and black ribbon without damaging a flower.

"For Lisa Bolt," she said. "They might help make her more talkative."

Quinn grinned at her with a kind of sadness. "Pearl, Pearl…"

"I can't think of a better use for them," Pearl said.

"Nor can I."

Quinn put up the BACK SOON sign and locked the door behind them.

They got in the Lincoln, Quinn at the wheel. On the drive to the hospital Pearl was quiet, but he could feel the energy coming off her damp flesh like waves of high-tension electricity. It reminded him of the way you could put your fingers up close to a TV screen and see the individual hairs on the back of your hand rise.

Lightning stitched the gray summer sky, bright enough to hurt the eye even in daylight. Quinn wondered if it was a coincidence.

He lay in agony, the edge of the knife blade resting lightly on his chest. He'd thought he was in control, but it hadn't turned out that way. The need had always been there, and now it was alive.

Unknown forces, driven by shame and guilt, were in control. He could see his fate moving like clouds across the ceiling.

This must not happen.

He should have known, should have been more careful, should have planned better.

Didn't he think he'd someday reach this point?

"Should have" is in the past.

The past that he'd thought was dead. That he feared so that it ruled his dreams. The past.

It must not happen again. It must not!

He had said the words aloud the first time to gather courage. Now he said them again, this time only in his mind.

I am a fool.

He applied the knife.

I must wash the sheets carefully.

Lisa Bolt's hospital room smelled like Lysol and spearmint, as if it had just been disinfected by a cleaning lady chewing gum. Lisa was sitting almost completely erect in her cranked-up bed, her back propped against a pillow. She looked thin but surprisingly well. There was a flesh-colored strip of adhesive tape on the side of her neck. A beige turban was wound around her head, obviously to conceal a bandage. She was wearing light makeup but had her eyebrows penciled in as dark slash marks.

The nurse, who was middle-aged and looked like a gaunt, predatory bird, informed them that only two visitors would be allowed in the room. Quinn settled on himself and Pearl.

"Please keep in mind that she's still weak," the nurse cautioned Quinn.

"Of course we will."

The nurse glanced at him from the corner of her eye and seemed dubious.

"These are for you, Lisa," Pearl said with a smile. She placed the vase of flowers on an otherwise bare windowsill and deftly and lovingly adjusted the arrangement.

"Do you want some water?" Quinn asked Lisa, motioning with his head at the plastic glass and pitcher on the tray table rolled close to the bed.

Lisa kept her head on the pillow as she moved it slowly back and forth once to decline. Her head didn't move at all as she looked at Pearl and then at Quinn.

"I owe you an apology," she said. Her voice was raspy from disuse, or perhaps from the feeding tube that had been recently removed.

"We're glad you're alive," Quinn told her.

"You owe us the truth," Pearl said, pushing too hard too fast.

Quinn gave her a look, signaling her to ease up and listen for a while without butting in. She understood it perfectly, and he knew it. Both of them thought it was scary sometimes, the way they could almost read each other's thoughts.

Pearl moved a step back from the bed as Quinn continued. "It is time for the truth, Lisa." His tone was not at all threatening.

"I know," Lisa said. She took a deep breath and swallowed, wincing as if it hurt.

"You're sure about the water?" Quinn asked.

She nodded and then closed her eyes. "I'm trying to organize my thoughts before I tell you about this."

"Of course…of course…we understand."

"It's as if I've been away on a trip."

"Of course, of course…"

Lisa waited almost a full minute before beginning: "It started when Chrissie Keller came to my office in Columbus and hired me to see if I could somehow get her murdered twin's case reopened. She told me about her slot-machine windfall and waved a lot of money at me. Enough to convince me to take her on as a client even though I thought there wasn't a chance in hell I could reexamine the NYPD's old investigation and find something that would get them to reactivate the case." Lisa turned her head to the side, and her eyes teared up. "Since I didn't think I could help her, I shouldn't have taken her money. I know that."

"I think it's understandable," Quinn said. "You were in business to make money, and someone wanted to hire you. That's how it works in our occupation." We're all in this together. Allies. "Go right on with your story, dear."

Lisa gazed up at him and managed a slight smile. Pearl could hardly stand watching this.

"I knew that to help Chrissie I'd have to be creative," Lisa said. "I did some research and decided that since I wouldn't have much pull with the NYPD, maybe I could sort of sublease the case to somebody who would have pull. Somebody like you. To do that, I'd have to be convincing, the way Chrissie was convincing with me. I struck on the idea of pretending at first that I was Chrissie, the surviving twin. Chrissie liked the idea."

"And why not? It's quite clever."

Lisa signaled silently that she would like some water now, and Quinn helped her to take a few dribbling swallows.

That earned another smile from Lisa, as if Quinn were Father Teresa. "My job was to gain your trust," she said in a somewhat revitalized voice, "and then shadow the investigation and eventually tell Chrissie who and where the killer was before the police got to him. That last part was important."

Quinn understood why. Chrissie wanted to get to her sister's murderer first. "She wanted to be ensured of justice. Her kind of justice."

"Yes," Lisa said. "Chrissie is consumed by a yearning to avenge her twin's death. It's almost as if she herself had been molested, mutilated, and murdered."

"I take it you mean she feels that way…beyond the norm."

"Far beyond. If there is such a thing as a norm in this kind of situation. She's obsessed. You know how it can be with twins. It's spooky, almost like two bodies sharing a common mind. And it doesn't seem to stop after death. At least, that's the way Chrissie sees it. And there's something else."

"Else?" Quinn said, wishing Addie or maybe Helen the NYPD profiler was present to decipher some of the deeper motivations floating around here.