John Lutz - In for the Kill

Pearl left enough money on the table to cover the drink and tip and stood up. "You do that, Lauri. You talk to Wormy the way I talked to you. Of course, if you stop following me around, there won't be a problem."

"There won't be a problem," Lauri said, scooping up the money.

Not "I'll stop following you."

Genetic, Peal thought again, as she walked from the restaurant, not realizing she was moving to the infectious beat of Lost in Bonkers.

Celandra jogged in place until the traffic signal changed at West Eighty-ninth Street, then crossed the intersection and continued jogging south on Broadway. Heads male and female turned to glance at the tall, graceful woman with the long brown hair, dressed in red shorts that fit her loosely but were nonetheless revealing, and a gray sleeveless T-shirt with a sports bra beneath. When it came to nullifying curves, the sports bra did about as well as the overmatched baggy shorts.

Most New York joggers favored the park or more sparsely traveled side streets, but Celandra loved running down Broadway, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of the city as she worked up a sweat and began breathing hard. She tried to jog every other night, and to push herself. It was good exercise not only for her appearance, but for her endurance in dance numbers. She'd take more dance lessons when she could afford it, but for now her running would have to do.

In the West Sixties she began to tire, and to feel the stitches of pain in her ribs and the burning in her thighs.

Had enough…Time to turn around.

She drew admiring stares and a man's offer to run with her as she jogged in place again and waited for a traffic-locked furniture van to move so she could cross the street. Trying not to breathe the van's noxious exhaust fumes too deeply, she began the return run toward her apartment.

She was spent a block from home and began to walk, her shirt plastered to her by perspiration, her head bowed, her hands on her hips; still drawing stares, a marathoner and wet T-shirt contest winner.

By the time she reached her building, her breathing had evened out but was still labored. The burning sensation in her thighs was gone. Her legs felt heavy, tired, good. She smiled. It had been a productive workout. Someday all her hard work would pay big career dividends. She truly believed she'd make it as a major actress. Had anyone ever made it without believing?

She wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow and drew deep, steadying breaths as she waited for the elevator. The ancient brass arrow above the door trembled and hesitated as if struggling against gravity as it dropped from 3 to 2 to 1, and the elevator's steel door scraped and slid open.

A sixtyish, red-haired woman Celandra knew only as Mrs. Altmont stepped from the elevator with her tiny Yorkie, Edgemore, on a leash. Mrs. Altmont lived down the hall from Celandra and had the tight, stiff stare of too much cosmetic surgery. Her lean features seemed out of sync with her pudgy body. She'd once told Celandra she'd named Edgemore after her former husband. Celandra assumed Edgemore, the husband, might still be paying off the surgery.

The canine Edgemore growled at Celandra, as he always did, and as she always did, Mrs. Altmont smiled at her. As they passed getting in and out of the elevator, Celandra glanced down and saw that Mrs. Altmont already had a small plastic bag like a mitten over her free hand.

She saw where Celandra was looking and her smile widened and became almost apologetic. "Why do we love them so?"

She might have been talking about either of the Edgemores.

"Sometimes they're worth it," Celandra said, returning the smile.

The elevator door slid closed.

Other than her killer, Mrs. Altmont would be the last person to see Celandra alive.

The odor was overpowering.

Quinn wondered if the relentless repetition of the butchery was meant to assail the senses and wear down the killer's pursuers, if it was part of a strategy. If so, it might be working.

Dr. Julius Nift was present for this one. He was dressed for a day in the boardroom, in a black chalk-stripe suit, white shirt, red tie, gleaming black wing-tip shoes. He didn't look as if he belonged in the cracked tile bathroom of this little apartment in the West Nineties, bent over a bathtub and probing at body parts.

Quinn and his team had gotten the call at the office from Renz, so arrived together in an unmarked city car driven by Fedderman. Quinn left Feds to talk to the uniforms who'd been first on the scene, then went inside the apartment.

It was crowded with crime scene unit techs. A police photographer was there, too, sending pops of illumination over the odd sight of people wearing white gloves and assuming various awkward positions so they could see something close up or pluck it up with tweezers and drop it into a plastic evidence bag. So many bodies moving around in the small apartment, it was a wonder they didn't bump into one another. Crime scene choreography was in itself a science.

Nift and the victim were alone together in the bathroom, though. The techs had finished there as quickly as possible and left it to the medical examiner. After a first glimpse, and sniff, not even the most hardened of the professionals present were tempted even to go near the bathroom again.

The little ME didn't actually look back at Quinn and Pearl, but by his head movement acknowledged their presence. They glanced around the beige and white tiled confines. There were the empty cleaning containers-a box of powdered dishwasher detergent, green plastic shampoo bottle, laundry detergent, a couple of gallon bleach jugs capless and lying next to each other.

The raw meat stench was stomach kicking despite the obvious use of the cleansers. Pearl unconsciously raised her cupped hand to cover her mouth and nose, then realized what she was doing. She couldn't appear soft in front of Nift and Quinn, so she pretended her nose itched, rubbed it, and lowered her hand.

Nift shifted to his left and a dim brown eye gazed up at Quinn.

Pearl almost gagged as she returned the dead stare of the severed head resting on its side atop the detached arms.

"Brown hair," she said flatly, of the dead woman in the tub. No emotion. Better to be a cop instead of a horrified basket case.

Nift said, "Let me introduce you to Miz Celandra Thorn. Forgive her if she doesn't shake your hand, but you can shake hers all you want."

Pearl felt like kicking the little bastard.

"Thorn!" Quinn said. "Not the roses themselves. Goddamnit!" He knew it was something they should have thought of; it had been hinted strongly enough by the note about roses. They'd missed the oblique reference in the killer's note again. It was there for them and so obvious in retrospect. They'd been outsmarted.

"Maybe Celandra is a type of rose," Pearl said, but she knew better. Like Quinn and Fedderman, she'd researched roses named after women until she'd never see roses the same way. It had been thorn, and they'd missed it.

Nift straightened up, holding a gleaming steel probe in his gloved right hand, and the entire familiar stack of pale body parts in the bathtub was visible. As with the other Butcher victims, the blanched cleanliness of the victim and the crime scene appeared antiseptic and barren of anything that might prove in any way useful. Probably it would be difficult even to find a germ, much less a clue. There was only the ritual arrangement of meat on display.

"Like the others," Nift said. "Same blades, same saw marks, same technique in reducing the whole to its parts." He flashed his nasty smile. "If you put her back together, you'd have a beautiful woman."

"Would you rather we leave?" Pearl asked.

Nift ignored her. "As you can see, she was facially a knockout. She had the build, too. Very muscular as well as shapely. I'd guess she danced, judging by the impressively developed musculature in her thighs and calves. Or ran cross-country or lifted weights or some such thing. But with her looks, I think it'd be show business."