John Lutz - In for the Kill

"What's his name?"

"Wormy."

"God! Is that a nickname?"

"I don't know. I think it's French and I might be pronouncing it wrong."

Quinn heard noises in the hall, then the key ratcheting in the lock.

The door opened and Lauri came in alone. A vague, S-shaped shadow behind her writhed and flitted away in the hall.

"She just got home," Quinn said, trying to sound reassuring. He mouthed to Lauri, You're late.

"Close, though," she whispered back.

Quinn studied her. Clothes not too mussed, lipstick unsmeared, pretty much the same Lauri who'd left with the human worm.

"She all right?" asked the voice from California.

"Fine, fine…" Quinn held the phone out toward Lauri. "It's your mother. She wants to talk to you."

Lauri seemed to think about that, then shrugged and walked over to where Quinn sat on the sofa. He handed her the phone, then stood up and diplomatically left the room.

In the kitchen, he opened a cold Budweiser and for a brief moment considered listening in on the extension, then thought he'd probably be caught at it.

Sitting at the table, sipping his beer, he couldn't make out the contents of the conversation in the next room, but it didn't take long, and Lauri's tone was curt.

After a few minutes of silence, she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"Your mother still on the line?" Quinn asked.

"No. I guess she didn't have anything more to say to you." She smiled at him. "I'm going to bed. Unless you wanna chew me out first for being forty-five minutes late."

"You were close enough," Quinn said. "Besides, eleven-thirty wasn't a promise, it was just something Wormy mentioned." He took a sip of beer. "You like that guy?"

"Not nearly as much as he likes me."

Quinn tilted back the bottle for another sip. "You'd better get used to that kind of thing."

Lauri looked at him. "Fatherly wisdom, along with a compliment. I like that. Thanks." She waved languidly to him. "'Night."

"'Night," he said, not sure whether she was kidding.

He sat for a while absently peeling the label from the beer bottle, trying to sort through how he was feeling, not getting anywhere. Probably like a lot of fathers of teenage girls. Unknowing. Unsettled.

He decided he'd ask Pearl to talk with Lauri, to just sort of get acquainted. Maybe she could figure things out and enlighten him.

Then maybe Lauri could explain Pearl.

"It somehow makes the murder more intimate," Renz said.

He unmistakably winked at Pearl before he glanced around. It was the first time he'd been in the office space the city had rented for Quinn and his team, and he was obviously thrown by the idea of the place as an ersatz squad room. It looked more like the scene of a boiler room operation that had folded only minutes before the police arrived.

Zzzziiiiiiiiiii, went a drill at Nothing but the Tooth.

Renz winced.

"Murder itself is as intimate as it gets," Quinn said. "The fact that the killer displayed some of the victim's pubic hair after dismembering the body doesn't make it any worse."

"No," Pearl said, "Deputy Chief Renz is right. There's something especially intimate about that kind of thing that gets to people-especially women. But men, too, if they have any sensitivity." She was perched on the edge of her desk, where she could usually be found instead of in her chair.

Quinn gave her a dark look from behind his desk. Was she ticked off at him over something? And Renz was at least sensitive enough to know he was being played.

But Renz was smiling; Pearl was playing his game. "Officer Kasner has it figured right, Quinn. That's why the chief and the commissioner and everybody who ever so much as ran for office in New York is on my ass."

"Which is why you're here," Quinn said.

"Yep. Pass the potato. You and your team have gotta start showing some results, or the entire NYPD will be in so much deep shit with the pols it'll be traded for Boston's police department."

"Or Mayberry's," Fedderman said. Pearl figured he must have seen Renz's earlier wink.

Renz grinned. "I like that. Your team's at least got a sense of humor, Quinn. Like a lot of losers, they've learned to laugh at themselves."

"I was thinking the same thing," Quinn said.

Now Renz was laughing. They were all laughing. Oh, it was a jolly world.

Renz wiped his eyes. "I was told by the chief to come here and shake a knot in your tail. I'm going easy because I know how it is, how clean this bastard works, so there's nothing you can grasp that doesn't slide right outta your mind. All I'm saying is, remember who hired you. We're working together while you're working for me."

"And we are working," Pearl said, having lost track of who was doing the kidding.

"And hard," Fedderman added.

"Don't I know it?" Renz said. "This visit is just a political necessity." He studied Quinn. "So what ails you? Have a bad night?"

"Real bad," Quinn said. He wondered if Renz would have a sense of humor if he had Lauri for a daughter.

"Anything I can help with?" Renz asked sincerely, probably putting on Quinn again.

"No. It's family stuff. Kinda thing you've gotta shake off so you can get to work."

"So I was about to say," Renz told him.

There was a sudden, muffled yelp.

Renz appeared startled. "What the hell was that?"

"Could be a root canal," Quinn said. "At the dental clinic on the other side of the building. That was the drilling you heard earlier."

"Ah. I thought maybe the Butcher was killing somebody right next door. Just the sort of thing he'd do to make us look bad."

"Different kinda sadist over there," Fedderman said, smiling with bad teeth.

Renz looked around again at the cluster of desks and workstations, the walls that were bare except for occasional nails or screws and clean rectangles where frames had been hung, the hardwood floor with clumps of tangled wiring jutting up from of it. "Place is a minefield. What happens if you step on one of those wiring masses? You get zapped?"

"Maybe," Pearl said.

Renz hitched his belt up over his belly and glanced down to make sure the drape of his pants was right. Quinn knew it was a sign he was about to leave.

Renz said, "Well, you people can consider yourself chewed out. Far as the chief knows, that's what happened here this morning."

"Thanks," Pearl said. She thought somebody should say it so Renz would leave believing his line of crap had been a sale.

Renz nodded to her, let his gaze slide over Quinn and Fedderman, then turned and went out the door.

"Man's some piece of work," Pearl said.

"Piece of something," Fedderman said. He got up from behind his desk and sauntered across the minefield to pour himself a cup of coffee.

Pearl waited until he was out of earshot. "What kind of family problem?" she asked Quinn.

"The Lauri kind."

She looked simultaneously sympathetic and amused. "From what I know of her, which is very little, she seems like a nice kid."

"She is. And a naive one. She's got some misconceptions that I'm afraid make her vulnerable."

"We talking about a boyfriend?"

"If you can call him that."

"Well, I think I understand the situation. She's probably not as naive and vulnerable as you imagine, Quinn."

"That's what I'd like you to find out."

Pearl raised her vivid eyebrows in surprise. She wasn't sure what to think of this. Family was sticky.

God! I really should call my mother, after hanging up on her the way I did.

"Just meet and talk with her," Quinn implored. "Get to know her a little. She might tell another female stuff she wouldn't tell her father."

"Oh, she might," Pearl said. What must it be like to have Quinn for a father?

"Will you do that, Pearl?"