Finally the panic passed. The terror remained.
For some reason she thought of mermaids. Mermaids have no legs, only a single tail that they can flop around helplessly when out of the water. But mermaids could at least speak. With her panties wadded into a mass in her mouth, and her lips sealed with duct tape, Tanya could make only a low humming sound.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” a man’s voice said.
She managed to swivel her head toward the sound, causing a sharp ache in her neck, as if she’d been jabbed with a needle. Outlined against the angled morning sunlight splashed on the white sheer curtains, she saw the dim silhouette of a man.
As he moved toward her she noticed something short and curved in his hand. She could tell by the way he was holding it-out away from his body and with respect-that it was a knife.
With an oddly delicate motion, he removed the thin sheet that was covering her.
Tanya was suddenly cold, and at the same time felt a spreading warm wetness beneath her as her bladder released. Until now, she had only thought she’d known fear.
He gently laid something over her head-the sheet-so that she couldn’t see what was coming. She knew that he wanted each singular agony to be a surprise.
Two, three drops of liquid fell onto the sheet, and she smelled the acrid scent of ammonia. Then came a sound she recognized-the ratchet catch of a cigarette lighter-and another scent she knew. He’d lit a cigarette.
If there had been any doubt as to who had her, there was none now.
Tanya began to scream, over and over, sounding very much like a desperate bee trapped in a tightly sealed jar.
There was only one person close enough to hear her, and he wasn’t going to help.
71
“So here’s what I learned,” Lido said, standing up from where he’d been seated in Pearl’s chair.
Fedderman had come in. He stopped and stood still in obedience to Quinn’s hand signal. The Q and A detectives were all there except for Vitali and Mishkin, who were still touching final bases in their fruitless search for the source of the killer’s carpet-tucking knife.
Lido, drunk for a change on adrenaline rather than alcohol, began to pace as he spoke, three steps, then a quick turn, like a dance step, and three steps back. “I sifted through travel matches that occurred on or near the dates of the murders,” he said. “Concentrated on male passengers between twenty-five and fifty years old and traveling alone.”
“All this on the Internet?” Fedderman asked.
Lido glanced at him but didn’t bother to answer. Quinn gave Fedderman a nod.
“Whaddya think, Feds?” Pearl said. “He was running around in Nikes?”
Lido ignored them all and continued: “This turned up a possibility. A passenger named Lincoln Evans flew from Kansas City, Missouri, into Hartford, Connecticut, on two occasions in the past three months. Hartford is only ninetytwo miles from New York City. Both times the going and return flights bracketed Skinner murders, and both flights had layovers in St. Louis. Both times Evans paid cash for his ticket, and both times the airline made a note of his address for their database and for Homeland Security. Evans lives, or lived, in the small town of Edmundsville, Missouri.”
Lido stood still and looked at them, as if expecting a reaction.
“Seems kind of spare,” Pearl said.
“You don’t get it yet?”
“No.”
Lido grinned. “Only because I’m not finished.”
Here was something Quinn hadn’t seen in Lido-a flair for the dramatic. Probably a hopeful sign.
“I then went to work via the Internet”-Lido glanced at Fedderman-“on the car-rental agencies.”
Quinn knew these were mostly questionable databases. He hoped no one would ask Lido about the legality of his Net searches. And how those searches would be used as evidence in court. Quinn was already thinking about how to put the monkey of illegal searches on Renz’s back, where he could be sure methodology would never get in the way of results-or political glory.
“On both Hartford occasions,” Lido said, “Lincoln Evans rented a Budget midsized car, paying cash and using his driver’s license as identification. I managed to check deeper into the rental records.”
“Hacked into them?” Fedderman asked.
“I don’t like that term,” Lido said, and ignored Fedderman. “Car-rental agencies keep scrupulous mileage records. Both times, Evans drove far enough to have visited New York City and then return to Hartford.”
Lido sat back down in Pearl’s chair and looked around, grinning in exhausted triumph.
Pearl returned his grin. “Now I do get it. Our killer’s covering his tracks by not making any. He flies into nearby cities and then drives into New York.”
“His killing ground,” Fedderman said.
“And later he leaves New York the same way. I’m not finished checking other cities,” Lido said, “but it’ll be easier, now that we have a name.”
“Lincoln Evans,” Pearl said, as if the vowels left a bad taste.
“Great work!” Quinn said. And it was that, all right. Quinn knew that at the same time it might mean nothing other than that within the time frames of two of the Skinner murders, the same man, meeting their narrow criteria, visited a city within easy driving distance of New York. Maybe he was a business traveler with clients in Hartford and New York. Maybe he paid cash because he was a wise spender who didn’t believe in credit. Maybe his credit had been revoked. Maybe he was a serial murderer trying to cover his tracks on the way to and from his kill zone.
Though what they had wasn’t that much in and of itself, in the context of building a case, the information was specific.
Pearl was leaning a shoulder into the wall, obviously pleased by Lido’s jittery but cogent presentation.
Fedderman was still standing stock still, working out in his mind what it all might mean.
The office had slipped into an anticlimactic torpor.
Quinn looked at Lido. “You had breakfast?”
Lido shook his head no. “Too busy to eat.”
And too excited, Quinn thought. This was a major achievement for Lido. The discredited, ostracized alcoholic had come through with what might be the name of the killer. He had something to build on. But right now, Lido needed for his pulse rate to be brought down a few notches.
Quinn knew Lido must have done most of his work fueled on whatever was available to drink. This didn’t seem the time to mention that.
Lido must have known what Quinn was thinking, because he smiled guiltily and shrugged.
“Time for real food,” Quinn said. “Eggs, toast, sausages.”
Lido knew that tone in Quinn’s voice. It left no room for argument. He stood up out of Pearl’s chair. “Okay, and some coffee.”
“Decaf,” Quinn said.
He was pleased to see Pearl smiling as they went out the door.
72
Edmundsville, the present
Edna Wellman was distraught when she phoned the sheriff’s office, so Billy Noth passed the phone to Westerley. The sheriff and Edna’s husband Joe had been hunting buddies before Joe’s fatal heart attack five years ago.
“It’s about my nephew Mathew,” Edna said in a voice made soprano by… what, disbelief? Anger?
“He and I have met,” Westerley said calmly, trying to slow down Edna. “He seems like a nice kid.”
“Well, you wouldn’t think so if…”
“If what?” Westerley wanted to get this call out of the way and tend to more important business, like surveying the week’s traffic citations and felony statistics.
“If you come over here, I think you could better understand the problem.”
Westerley sighed, hoping Edna hadn’t heard. “Okay, Edna, I’ll be right there.”
The Wellman house, a 1970s brick ranch with two-car garage, was only three blocks from Westerley’s office, on a tree-lined cross street of similar houses. Edna was waiting for him with the door open.