“Was he a magnet for bullies?”
“No more than any kid small for his age. And bullies didn’t taunt him once they learned he was my little brother.”
“So you were pretty tough.”
She laughed. “No, just pretty. The boys wanted to stay on my good side.”
“Easy to see why.”
She ignored the compliment. “When I was sixteen and George was thirteen, our father died in an industrial accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Chemical,” she said. “He was a chemist, and someone at the plant where he worked for Montrose Insecticide and Feed used a wrong compound in a weed-killer, and it…killed my father. Our father.” She looked at Quinn, then back at the point above his head. What does she see there?
“Poisoned him?”
“The fumes destroyed his lungs. It was a terrible way to die.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. Quinn sat quietly, giving her time.
“When Dad died, it was as if a bomb had exploded in the family. Our mother raised us, never remarried. She had to work two jobs to keep the family going. Things changed between George and me. He became the protector. I became more of a…victim.”
Quinn listened patiently for well over an hour while she went on to describe their home life, the pets they’d had, the arguments, how she and her brother had attended the same college, how George had an inborn skill with numbers, which carried him through business school. After working at a brokerage house he managed to attract investors and started a growth mutual fund, which evolved into a hedge fund, Prudent Power. Zoe meanwhile had gone on to postgraduate studies and earned her degree. She interned and worked for a while in a clinic, then as a corporate psychologist. Eight years ago she began her own practice.
“Obviously, you and George were both highly motivated.”
“I suppose so.” She smiled sadly. “To escape grief, perhaps.”
“Sounds as if things were hard for you.”
“Only to a degree. We were both good students, and we must have inherited ambition.”
“Strange thing for a psychoanalyst to say.”
“I suppose it is. But I think we both felt that things would work out okay for us.”
“Is your mother—”
“She died twelve years ago. A heart attack.”
“George never married?”
“He almost did, once. But the girl changed her mind.”
“What about his sister?”
She looked startled. Then she smiled, understanding he was talking about her. “I almost did once, too. Only I changed my mind.”
“George and you turned out to be overachievers.”
“That’d be my diagnosis,” she said.
“Because of your father’s death?”
“Maybe. He was an overachiever, too, as was his father.”
“In your genes.”
“Yeah, maybe. So much is genetic. Do you think murder is genetic, that it’s in your killer’s genes?”
“I honestly don’t know. That’d be your field.”
“Well, Detective Quinn—” She seemed suddenly surprised at herself. “I forgot to get your first name.”
“Just Quinn’ll work.”
“I thought we were on a first-name basis.”
“We are, Zoe. My given name’s Frank, but everyone calls me Quinn.”
“Well, Quinn, I don’t know, either. About the killer gene.”
She sat farther back. He sat back. They regarded each other.
“Life’s so goddamned short,” she said.
“For some of us. Usually the wrong ones.”
“Has this conversation been a help?” she asked.
“Has it helped you?”
She swallowed. “I suppose it has. It hasn’t brought George back, though.”
“It might help to catch his killer,” Quinn said. “There’s no way to know for sure at this point.”
“If you really think you and I getting together might help,” she said, “maybe we should do it again.”
Quinn felt surprised and oddly embarrassed. He couldn’t contain his smile. “I thought you psychoanalysts were supposed to be obscure.”
“That was me being obscure,” she said. “What I really meant is that you intrigue me. Your methods, who you are. Maybe it’s because you’re trying to track my brother’s killer. Maybe when you catch him, or kill him, you’ll no longer intrigue me.”
“That was direct enough,” Quinn said.
“Often being direct is wise. Life offers only so many opportunities, it’s a shame not to explore them. Believe me, I’m not being impulsive. I’d tell you I hardly ever do this kind of thing, only you already know that.”
“I do know it,” Quinn said.
“I don’t take very many chances.”
Oh, yes you do. Was your brother a gambler like you? A risk taker? Some people say that’s in the genes.
“Neither do I,” he said.
She crossed her arms, cocked her head to the side, and stared at him with hope and a certain vulnerability. He knew what courage it must take. But at the same time, the lady seemed to get off on risk. Quinn understood that; he often fought the same instinct in himself.
And sometimes he didn’t fight it.
What the hell, since we’re being direct: “How about dinner, then maybe later…?”
“How about sooner,” she said “then maybe dinner?”
Later that night Quinn wondered, is there a victim gene?
23
It was almost like watching a wary exotic fish considering a variety of lures. The man in the unmarked blue baseball cap had watched her yesterday from across Broadway as she meandered from shop to shop, looking in windows, regarding the bait. He knew she’d finally see something that interested her and enter one of the shops. She would finally bite.
Men and women thought quite differently. He understood how women thought, had made a study of it. Certain women, for certain reasons, he studied individually and closely.
That was because only certain women would do. It would be wrong to call them all the same physical type. It was more something about their bearing, the way they held themselves and moved. The way they thought. The look in their eyes.
That was something he hadn’t yet seen. He hadn’t looked into this one’s eyes.
She was certainly attractive, he thought, as he slowed and stood with his hands in his pockets, staring across the street. She was medium height, with long dark hair, long legs encased in tight jeans, long and graceful arms that nonetheless looked strong. Even her neck was long and slender. What interested him most was her ballet dancer’s tightly sprung body. It hinted at physical strength as well as grace, reminiscent of a wild and lovely animal that might bolt and be up to speed in seconds. A prey animal, like an elegant gazelle. Every slight movement she made was unconscious art.
She went into a mid-price fashion shop and, after about fifteen minutes, emerged carrying a small white shopping bag. From outside the shop he followed her back the way she’d come, along Broadway. She was walking now with a firm destination in mind, and he had to quicken his pace to keep up with her long, graceful strides.
Finally she took the concrete steps down a shadowed stairwell to a subway platform. Even descending the steps, had she wanted to, she could have balanced a book on her head.
Though the train was crowded, she managed to find a seat. He stood halfway down the car, holding on to a vertical steel bar, unobtrusively watching her.
They didn’t ride far before exiting the subway and surfacing back into the bright sun. Like moles, he thought, blinking at the light. He was sure she still hadn’t noticed him as he fell in behind her at a prudent distance.
He had to find out as much as possible about her, and where she lived was essential information.
It turned out to be a West Side apartment in an old brick building with phony green shutters and fancy grillwork on the ground-floor windows. He’d watched, but it was impossible to know which unit she’d entered. It was probably useless to cross the street and look at the mailboxes, and he might attract suspicion.