“Nobody’s called in with any information or identification of our artist’s rendering of the Gremlin,” Renz said. “Probably if anybody gets a good look at him, they still won’t have paid enough attention to recognize him from that composite.”
“It hasn’t worked so far,” Quinn admitted. He was wondering why Renz had suggested this meeting.
He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“We’ve got another victim,” Renz said. “Woman over on West Seventy-seventh Street. Dora Palm.”
Quinn felt the stab of anger and sadness that he always felt when informed of a victim, especially a victim given a name. Somehow the name made the murder even more grotesque, the victim more real and alive—a person with a past and present. Until a short time ago, a future. “Any doubt it was the Gremlin?”
“None. The ME even says he can tell it was the same blade. Says the killer used a sharp knife here and there, but a jigsaw for hard to reach parts or heavy-duty cutting.”
“When did it happen?”
“Last night around ten o’clock. After a steak dinner with a good Merlot. At least she got that.”
“We all get that,” Quinn said, “sometimes not knowing when it’s coming. Maybe it’s better that way.”
“Or not.”
“Crime Scene techs find anything useful?”
“Not yet. But they’re still looking. Why I called you about this one was to warn you to be careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“What you say. Who you say it to. Extra careful. This is a somewhat complicated case.”
Quinn leaned back on the bench, watching the woman with the ponytail feeding the pigeons. “Tell me what I need to know, Harley.”
“You like dogs?”
“Depends on what kind.”
“Greyhounds.”
“A couple of them have run fast enough to win me money—but not much.”
“We’re talking about a racing dog,” Renz said. “Here’s to You.”
“Huh?”
“That’s the dog’s name.”
“This a racing dog?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Renz said. “It’s a dog.”
“How old?”
“About eight years.”
Quinn understood now what Renz was trying to say. “Here’s to You was probably a rescue dog, saved from an abbreviated life by some animal lovers’ organization that arranged homes for dogs that found themselves without owners. Here’s to You was probably adopted by Dora Palm when it retired from racing. Along with its new owner, it had been killed by the Gremlin.”
“You might say the killer autopsied the dog,” Renz said.
Quinn thought that over. “The bastard wanted to see why it could run so fast.”
“You know, that might be possible,” Renz said. “It was a greyhound, poor thing.”
Quinn knew Renz was making a joke by stating the obvious about his concern for an aging racing dog that had come to a bad end. That was contemptible but not unexpected.
Renz was aware that Quinn was a dog lover. A simple all-around pet lover. While Quinn felt genuine concern about Here’s to You, Renz felt none. What scared him was that Quinn might say or do something the public or some organization like PETA might build into an issue. Renz knew that if it helped to nail the Gremlin, however the dog was used would be okay with him. He would not be thinking of the dog.
Quinn would be.
That was a weakness.
Renz glanced at his watch and stood up, buttoning his voluminous suit coat. “Uniforms are still at the victim’s apartment. They and the ME know you’re on your way.” Renz tried to impress Quinn with an unblinking stare, but Quinn stared back mildly, unimpressed.
Beyond Renz, the pigeons had finally gotten out the word. Over a dozen now hopped and pecked around the bench where the ponytailed, beneficent woman sat casting out bread.
“I’ll swing by and pick up Pearl,” Quinn said.
Renz grinned. “Make sure she behaves.”
“Like always,” Quinn said, and walked toward where his black Lincoln sat gleaming in the blazing sun.
51
Once in the hushed quiet of the Lincoln, Quinn called Pearl on his cell and told her he’d be by the office to pick her up for the drive to Dora Palm’s address. Pearl said she was having lunch with her daughter, Jody, and would take the subway there as soon as possible.
Quinn told her he’d meet her at the victim’s address but to take her time, the person they wanted to see wasn’t going anywhere. “Better, too,” he said, “if you don’t bring Jody.”
“She wouldn’t be interested anyway,” Pearl said, sotto voce. “She’s all involved in an animal rights case. Can lizards be classified as pets that—”
“Never mind,” Quinn cut in. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“The lizards just might have a case. Of course, the roaches wouldn’t—”
“Still don’t want to hear it,” Quinn said, using his thumb to break the connection and turn off his phone.
He hadn’t told Pearl that the medical examiner assigned to the case was her antagonist, Dr. Julius Nift.
She was, after all, eating lunch.
Dora Palm’s apartment was in a midtown brick and stone structure that had once been an office building. Like many midtown buildings these days, its face was made temporarily anonymous by scaffolding.
Quinn saw a uniformed cop within the maze of scaffolding about the same time the cop saw him. When he flashed his ID, the cop motioned him over.
After parking the car, Quinn went on foot and zigged and zagged through the scaffolding, along a temporary plank walkway.
The cop motioned again, this time to indicate the building entrance. Quinn thought he might know the cop, but he wasn’t sure. The guy had one of those average-this, average-that faces. They might simply have glimpsed each other along the way. Be a cop long enough and faces were indelible once seen, stored somewhere along with identifying marks and bloody crime scenes and the indignities of death. A cop’s mind . . .
“This way, Captain,” the cop said. That was when Quinn recognized him. Vincent Royston, from Homicide South. It had been a couple of years.
“How you doing, Vince?”
Royston’s face lit up. He was pleased to be recognized by Quinn, whom he saw as someone reasonably famous. At least in cop circles.
It was a rhetorical question, but Royston said he was doing the best he could.
“Aren’t we all?” Quinn said.
But sometimes he wondered.
“Third floor,” Royston said, realizing he wasn’t going to be engaged in a lengthy conversation. “Left off the elevator.”
Quinn went through a narrow, unmarked doorway he would never have guessed was an entrance. He found himself in a fairly large foyer that had been created when several other spaces were taken down. It was the kind of place that ordinarily would have a doorman, if it weren’t for all the remodeling. Eight or ten people were coming and going through the maze of iron pipes supporting the scaffolding in the lobby. Almost everyone wore work clothes, and some had on hard hats. A sign was nailed crookedly to a vertical support beam reading EXCUSE OUR DUST.
The elevator looked purely functional on the outside, but when Quinn stepped inside and the door closed, everything looked finished, mostly in oak and brushed metal. Quinn’s mind went back to the elevator in the Blenheim Building, to what must have gone on among the passengers during the five or six seconds it took to reach the basement once they realized what must be happening. His mind recoiled.
The elevator stopped smoothly and the door opened on the third-floor hall. Quinn stepped out, turned left, and saw that on this floor everything looked as finished and usable as in the elevator. Oak wainscoting and brushed metal was the theme here, too. It appeared that interior rehabbing had begun in the upper floors and was working its way down. Probably a money thing, Quinn thought. Rents collected on the high-priced upper-floor apartments would help to finance the lobby’s modern curved marble registration area, and what might someday become a fashionable bar and restaurant.