Urge to Kill (44 page)

Quinn smiled down at her. “You make me want to stay.”

“But you can’t,” she said.

“You’re ahead of me.”

“There’s no ahead or behind. I understand you, that’s all.”

“Your job,” he said.

“No, darling. It’s more than my job.”

He kissed her again and didn’t look back at her as he left.

When he got to his apartment building he was surprised that there wasn’t a package waiting for him in his mailbox. He was sure there was room for it, but he found only the usual fliers and bills.

But when he went upstairs there was the package in front of his apartment door. It was about six inches square, tightly encased in brown wrapping paper fastened with heavy tape. There was no label. Quinn’s name and address were printed in black ink directly on the wrapping. He knew there’d be no fingerprints to be found, and the name and address lettering looked as if it had been done with a ruler and would provide no basis for comparison. The wrapping paper, too, would be a common brand and untraceable.

Still, when he got inside the apartment he put on latex gloves before carefully opening the package.

Inside the wrapping paper was a white box of the sort a large piece of jewelry might come in. Inside the box was a small .25-caliber Springbok revolver. It was loaded. Its barrel was almost short enough to be called snub-nosed, colored a dusky blue steel like the rest of the revolver except for its checked wooden grip. It looked cheap, like the kind of piece that might blow up in your hand, but Quinn knew it was simple and effective. A close-in weapon. It would be easy to conceal and make very little noise, but it would do the job.

He called Fedderman, who came within fifteen minutes with a guy from the lab named Peterman, who looked about sixteen years old and was all business. Peterman dusted the revolver for prints and found none. The box, paper wrapping, and tape he put in a plastic evidence bag. He and Fedderman took the bag with them when they left. Quinn knew the contents of the evidence bag would provide about as much workable evidence as the revolver. None.

As they went out the door, Fedderman gave Quinn a sad backward glance that had a disturbing finality about it.

Fedderman and Peterman had been there less than twenty minutes. Time seemed to be running faster now, at least for Quinn. As if it might be running out.

He found a clean, soft rag under the sink and wiped print dust off the revolver, then checked it to make sure it was in good working condition. He felt secure in his apartment, but he tucked the gun in his belt anyway, then went into the kitchen and poured himself two fingers of Famous Grouse scotch in a water tumbler.

He made sure the apartment was securely locked, then sat for a long time at his desk, sipping scotch.

When he finally went to bed, he placed the gun beneath his pillow. Being an old single-action revolver, it would have to be cocked by drawing back the hammer before it could be fired. There was little chance of that happening accidentally. It was a good under-the-pillow gun.

The scotch relaxed him enough that he could get to sleep, but a small corner of his mind remained awake.

Lavern Neeson sat in the chair by the bed for hours, cradling the shotgun almost as if it were a child. She listened to Hobbs snore and to the familiar sounds of the building, the steady hum of the air-conditioning, the faint pop and rattle of pipes, the occasional muffled crack of wood expanding or contracting. In the kitchen, the refrigerator cycled on and off.

Shortly before dawn, she stood up from the chair and replaced the shotgun in the closet. Before closing the closet door, she stared for a long time at the box of shells on the top shelf. Such potential for destruction in such small items. Such potential for change with the simple squeeze of a trigger. Instantaneous, irreversible change. Like being yanked with a bang from one world and dropped into another.

The prospect was intimidating, but with every passing day it was less frightening than the world she lived in.

She stood with her bare feet on the cool wood floor, her face buried in her hands, and began to cry. Her sobs were almost silent, and no one was there to see her shoulders quake.

It didn’t take long for her to get herself under control. She’d become an expert at modulating and manipulating her emotions. Her expression was calm. Only her reddened eyes and the tear tracks on her cheeks remained of her violent fit of sobbing.

Peace and rest. She was beginning to associate the shotgun with peace and rest. That was dangerous and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop it.

Less than a minute later she was back in bed with Hobbs, feeling the heat emanating from his muscular body. He lay on his left side, facing away from her, unmoving and unaware, snoring away.

Lavern drifted into an uneasy sleep for a short while, and then the alarm went off.

The sun had barely risen when the landline phone on the table next to Quinn’s bed rang.

He woke slowly, not sure how many rings he’d missed, and tried to get his body to respond to the urgency he felt to answer the phone.

Finally his partially numb right hand found the receiver and clumsily removed it from its cradle.

Lying on his back, he pressed the receiver to his ear, said, “Quinn,” in a sleep-thickened voice.

The voice on the other end of the connection sounded wide awake, crisp, and authoritative.

It said, “Listen carefully. Don’t talk. These are the rules.”

The bedroom was bright with fragments of early morning sunlight when the man Mitzi Lewis knew as Rob Curlew observed her as she slept.

Standing nude, he leaned over her and listened closely to her breathing. She was still sleeping soundly.

Careful to make no noise, he gathered up his clothes and carried them into the bathroom. He ran no water and made little noise getting dressed.

He didn’t want to leave Mitzi, didn’t want to lose this one. But her surprise party last night had been a surprise for him, too. Now almost everyone she knew had seen him and would be able to supply police with descriptions, could identify him. Many of them had photographs of him with Mitzi.

He simply couldn’t take the chance. Sometimes the best of hunters came up empty.

When he was dressed, he found the blue carry-on that he’d promised Mitzi he’d open this morning, and walked softly back to her bed.

He stood very still and listened to her breathe, watched her sleep. She looked so innocent, so unknowing.

She would never know the pivotal moment in her life, the moment that had saved her life. Perhaps the great joke of her life. Being Mitzi, she might very well have looked at it that way.

He wanted to kiss her, but knew that might be a mistake. Instead he left the bedroom quietly, left her apartment, and disappeared into the city that was not yet all the way awake.

At 8:00 A.M., after a breakfast of eggs, sausage, and toast, Quinn phoned Renz and described his dawn phone call from the killer.

The rules were simple enough. At nine o’clock this morning the hunt would begin. It was limited to the island of Manhattan. Both men were to be armed only with their identical .25-caliber revolvers. Quinn was safe in his apartment until nine o’clock, but not afterward. From that point on, he was safe nowhere, nor was his opponent.

“He knows where you live, but you don’t know where he does,” Renz pointed out.

“That’s why I’m probably safe here,” Quinn said. “Our killer’s the sort who’d rather make it a sporting proposition. He wouldn’t consider it cricket to shoot me in my bed.”

“Cricket…” Renz repeated thoughtfully. “He use that word?”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn said.

“But you just used it,” Renz said. “Maybe because he did.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Maybe he watches the BBC.”

“There you go,” Renz said. “He also knows what you look like.”

“Only from newspaper photos, and they don’t do me justice.”

“He’s really not as cricket as he’d like you to think,” Renz said. “Let’s not forget he’s just another psycho asshole who makes his own rules.”

“There’s nothing in those rules about leaving my apartment
before
nine o’clock,” Quinn said. “That’s what I’ll be doing after I hang up on you.”

“Okay. I’ll issue the order again that no one is to interfere with you or the kil—your opponent.”

Both men were silent for a while, knowing this might well be their final conversation, and that there simply wasn’t any more to say other than everything, and that was impossible to put into words.

“Luck,” Renz said simply, and hung up.

It was when Quinn replaced the receiver that he remembered something. Maybe. It was possible the .25-Caliber Killer
had
used the word
cricket
in their phone conversation. He might have a touch of British accent.

Bloody hell!

Not that it changed anything if the killer did happen to be a Brit. He was soon going to find himself in a sticky wicket.

Quinn finished his coffee; then he hand washed and dried his breakfast dishes before leaving the apartment.

He figured a man who’d done the dishes in preparation for his next meal was unlikely to meet death until then. Surely if you planned for the future it was more likely there would be one.

Think alive, stay alive.

But he didn’t intend to spend the day simply trying to stay alive while keeping an eye out for the killer.

He had a destination.

Quinn left his apartment via the fire stairs, then he did a turn around the block to be reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed. It was possible, maybe likely, that his opponent had his apartment building already staked out though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.

He entered an office building whose lobby, lined with closed shops, ran through to the opposite block. Without pausing, he walked though it and out the opposite tinted glass doors, then doubled back outside, observing all the way. He was reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed.

What he wanted to do was lose himself in the city before nine o’clock.

The morning was warm and still, and with a slight overcast that would burn off by noon. Right now shadows were muted and the light seemed evenly distributed. Shooter’s weather. As he strode along the sidewalk, Quinn was aware of the weight of the Springbok revolver in one suit-coat pocket, his cell phone in the other.

Mustn’t get them confused,
he cautioned himself with a smile.

My God! Helen and Zoe are right. At least a part of me is enjoying this.

Though he didn’t think he was being followed, the tension was still there. His back muscles were tight, and his antennae were out for anything unusual, anything that might spell danger. He was moving through the city in a kind of hyperawareness. It was a strain that would eventually take its toll.

The trick, he soon realized, was to stay among people, but not so many that they provided cover to fire from and then escape into.

Stop thinking defensively. You be the one to use crowds for cover, to look for the killer and apprehend him, to take him down if necessary without killing anyone else.

Quinn was just beginning to realize how difficult that would be.

He didn’t want to keep pounding the pavement wearing himself out, and just in case he
was
at the moment being stalked, he didn’t want to become a still target, whatever the time.

On First Avenue he saw a bus preparing to stop for a knot of people standing in front of a bank. At the last second, he boarded and fed in his change. He found a seat away from the window, near the back of the bus, and settled in for his ride uptown.

The roar of the bus’s engine, the rhythm of accelerating and stopping, allowed him to relax. Manhattan was a big island. It wouldn’t be easy for hunter and prey to come together. The killer would be waiting and watching at points where his quarry might show—workplace, apartment, the near proximities of friends and associates, known haunts. That was part of the problem. Quinn knew practically nothing about his prey, and didn’t know how much his prey knew about him. He was beginning to catch on as to how this game was played. He would at some point have to actively hunt. Hunter could become prey in an instant.

He glanced at his watch. Almost nine o’clock.

He was fair game.

Dr. Alfred Beeker’s blond assistant Beatrice was on duty behind her desk in the anteroom when Quinn arrived at the doctor’s Park Avenue office. She was the only one in the room. A mug of coffee and a half-eaten cinnamon roll sat on a white paper napkin on her desk. The whole place smelled like cinnamon.

She looked up at Quinn and appeared frightened. Had Beeker told her about Quinn? Was Beatrice herself part of the S&M lifestyle that Beeker embraced?

“Is Doctor Beeker in?” Quinn asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “the doctor’s with a patient.” Doing a nice job of pretending not to remember Quinn.

“In his office?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to look in on him.”

Now Beatrice looked alarmed. Beeker must have put a word in her ear about Quinn. She glanced back at the door, then at Quinn, weighing her chances of stopping him from barging in on Beeker and not liking them.

“I need to see him,” Quinn said.

“I told you, he’s—”

“You don’t understand,” Quinn said. “I only want to
see
him. I won’t even say hello, if you don’t want me to.”

She stood up and faced him with her arms crossed. Quinn admired her spunk.

“I’m not going to go away until I see him,” Quinn said. “Which way would be less all-around trouble? If you called in and asked him to step out here for a moment, or if I barged in while he’s in the middle of a session with a patient?”

“What if I call the police?”

“You remember me, dear. The police?” He showed her his shield, though he was sure she already knew who he was.