Preliminary autopsy reports on the women suggested they were killed and dismembered swiftly. The killer had known he had minimum time.
“He made every second count,” Quinn said, leafing through the autopsy sheets, which were complete with photos.
“He must have known he had a way out without being trapped by the flames or smoke,” Fedderman said as the detectives passed around the files with photos.
“Looks like he went from point to point, killing and dismembering the women, then starting or feeding the fires.”
“Those women didn’t run because they were terrified,” Pearl said. She looked angry, but calm.
Quinn, reading further, said, “And with their Achilles tendons sawed through, right above their heels, there was no way they could stand up, or even crawl, out of a bathtub. Then, when the fire reached a certain point, the killer quickly finished his butchery and moved on in search of more victims.”
“How did he find them?” Pearl asked. “Look in every bathtub?”
“Listening for screams or calls for help,” Harold said. “Bathtubs are where lots of people trapped by fire take refuge. They fill them with water, climb in, and hope for the best.”
“And have their pleas answered by a gremlin with knives and saws,” Pearl said. “Nightmare stuff.”
Helen studied the postmortem report. “A figure of authority heard their calls and appeared, probably a fireman in a slicker and helmet. That’s why they didn’t run. They thought a rescuer had arrived. One of the first things he did was saw through their Achilles tendons. Then they couldn’t stand up or climb out of the tub. He’d have had to waste a move disassembling them as they got weaker and weaker from loss of blood. He probably eviscerated them last and then unwound and stacked their intestines.”
“Think of it without the blood,” Harold said, “and he sure does neat work.”
“Neat enough to be a doctor or a med-school student doing extra homework,” Sal said.
“Like a project,” Harold said.
Nobody spoke for a moment, thinking that one over.
“Nift says no,” Quinn said. “Our killer doesn’t possess that level of efficiency.”
“And there’s no sign of him having used power tools,” Fedderman said.
“Our guy wouldn’t do that,” Helen said. “That would depersonalize it.”
“Power tools might be noisy, too,” Harold said, and made a buzzing sound with his mouth to demonstrate.
Sal gave him the look, cautioning Harold not to get on a roll.
“The killer in Florida might have used the surf to cover up the sounds,” Jerry Lido said with a sideways glance. He’d been working on his computer while the others talked.
“Drowned them out,” Harold said.
“And the murder in Florida had an element of cannibalism.”
“Dinner is surfed,” Harold said.
Sal came within an inch of telling him to shut up.
“Not the same as the murders we’re investigating,” Sal said with raspy moderation. “The killer six years ago wasn’t nearly as proficient with his instruments as our killer.”
“Our gremlin tinkers,” Fedderman said. “Like he’s taking apart a robot to see how it’s put together.”
“How do we know he tinkers?”
“That’s what gremlins do,” Helen said. “And he was in a hurry, so he had the victims get in their bathtubs for him to protect themselves from the fire. In a rush, our Gremlin, as if he was on an assembly line doing piecework.”
“A sexual thing?” Fedderman asked.
“Gadgetry and efficiency as applied to flesh and bone,” Helen said. “We’ve all known people who’ve conducted stranger secret sex lives.”
Harold looked at her. “We have?”
Pearl said, “Shut up, Harold.”
Fedderman said, “I knew a guy with an enormous collection of Barbie dolls, and each one had a—”
“Forget it, Feds,” Pearl said.
“You guys,” Helen said, “are pathetic.”
“But they might be right,” Quinn said. “Especially when you put firebugs in the mix.”
“The hell with firebugs,” Sal grated in his bullfrog voice.
Quinn made an effort not to smile. He liked it when his detectives squabbled. Oysters and pearls.
16
When she studied him through the peephole and then opened her door to his knock, he hardly looked like a threat. A jockey-size man in built-up shoes to make him appear taller. His dark hair was long on the sides and combed back in wings that obviously existed to cover his ears. For all of that he was somehow physically appealing. There was a force about him. A certainty that drew a particular sort of woman.
Men like this, Margaret thought. They somehow know about women like me.
“You’re the man who’s been following me,” she said.
He smiled. “You’re the woman who’s been observing me following. You’ve got a lot of nerve, buzzing me in and answering my knock.”
“You took a chance coming here, yourself. For all you know, I might have considered you a rapist or burglar and shot you on the spot. I’ve done it before.”
Some of this happened to be true, but the burglar had been her ex-husband, and she’d stabbed him in the shoulder, not shot him. None of that mattered now. They’d stitched him up, and he was fine. And she’d gotten a restraining order against him.
“I was sure you wouldn’t think of me as dangerous,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not dangerous in any way. I’m sure you can read that in me.” He smiled. “You’re a good reader of men.”
“How would you know?”
“I’m a good reader of women.”
“Now you’re bullshitting, flattering yourself. That’s an ugly thing in a man.”
“If that’s true, how come you’re going to invite me in?”
“Maybe I like absurdly determined men.”
“You like men who sense right off how you are.”
“Oh? How am I?”
“A good person, but always up for adventure.”
Margaret leaned against the doorframe and looked at him for a long time. She had to look down at an angle, but that didn’t seem to bother him. The little bastard didn’t blink.
“You’ve got me pegged,” she said, realizing too late the sexual connotation.
He pretended not to notice, which helped to keep her in his corner. A real gentleman.
“If you ask me,” he said, “the world needs more like you.”
“It has more like me.”
“But they’re rare and hard to find.”
“You mean we’re rare and hard to find.”
He turned that over in his mind. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Modesty doesn’t become you.”
“That’s okay. I hardly ever become modest.”
“Do you know where the Grinder Minder is?” she asked.
“The coffee shop, yeah. Two blocks over. A pleasant walk.”
“I’m not crazy enough to invite you in,” she said, “but let’s take that walk. We can see through the lies, get to know each other better over coffee.”
“Learn what makes us tick,” he said, smiling. It was an unexpectedly beatific smile that made him, for an instant, look like a mischievous child.
“Sounds like us,” she said. She told him to wait a second while she got her purse.
They were one of only two couples in the Grinder Minder. The other couple was older, he with a scraggly gray beard and a bald head, she wearing faded jeans and a colorful tie-dyed T-shirt. There were winding tattoos on the woman’s inner wrists and up her forearms to the elbows, probably to disguise needle marks. Or maybe razor scars.
Margaret ordered a venti vanilla latte, and, amazingly, that was what he always drank. Most of the time, anyway. The killer watched Margaret’s gaze stay fixed for a few seconds on the other couple.
“Hippies lost in time,” he said.