Mister X Part 3

Quinn did his backward tilt in his desk chair and went into his casual balancing act, d.a.m.n near tipping. "A young, attractive victim, s.e.xually mutilated. There'd be plenty of photographs."

He watched Pearl go at it, like a hound on the scent, though she wouldn't like the comparison. She already had her computer booted up and was online, feeding Tiffany Keller's name into her browser.

It took only a few moments to search the New York papers' archives for related items.

Unsurprisingly, Tiffany's mutilation and death at the hands of the Carver had been a major news story. And as Quinn had thought, the gory details of the crime were accompanied by plenty of vivid photographs of the young, attractive victim.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Pearl said.

"Photos?" Quinn asked.

"Lots of them."

"Chrissie must have culled out the news clippings accompanied by photos," Fedderman said.

Pearl shook her head. "That's not what I mean."

Quinn and Fedderman moved closer so they could see her computer's monitor without glare.

Quinn felt the sensation in his stomach gain in intensity.

The screen showed what looked like a high school yearbook photo of a pretty, dark-haired girl with a broad grin and slightly uptilted brown eyes that suggested potential mischief. It was a potential never realized in a life cut short by the Carver.

The caption beneath the photo was simply the subject's name: Tiffany Keller Tiffany Keller.

Tiffany looked nothing like her twin who had hired Quinn and a.s.sociates to find her killer.

7.

"This is crazy," Pearl said, as they crossed West Forty-fourth Street toward the Sherman Hotel.

Quinn silently agreed with her. But sometimes it was a crazy world with its own kind of whatever pa.s.sed for logic.

"We're interrupting looking for a killer so we can search for our client," Pearl said.

"I told you, her check cleared," Quinn said. He hastened his pace to get across the heated concrete street before a white pickup truck leading a convoy of yellow cabs reached them. "That means we're still working for her." The line of vehicles hummed and rattled past behind them, stirring a warm breeze around their ankles.

"A cas.h.i.+er's check," Pearl said, when they were safely up on the sidewalk. "Which means we have no way to trace her through her checking account."

"If you're suggesting we should have been suspicious of her from the get-go," Quinn said, "you're right. I don't know how it happened, Pearl, but we've both become too trusting."

Pearl knew sarcasm when she heard it, so she bit her lip and held her silence.

It wasn't smart to cross Quinn when he was being sarcastic. It could mean he was getting angry with himself, which was when he was his most difficult with other people. So Pearl simply followed him silently through a heavily tinted gla.s.s revolving door into the welcome coolness of the Sherman Hotel's marble and oak lobby.

The Sherman was an old hotel in a difficult phase of renovation while remaining open. That brought the rates down, so there was no dearth of business despite the cordoned-off areas of the lobby where the floor was torn up, or the closed restaurant necessitating eating at the diner on the corner. The Sherman was small but had a shabby elegance about it that was being resurrected to something like its original state. Besides all the oak wainscoting and the veined marble floor and columns, there was a lot of fancy crown molding, and what looked like the original long, curved oak registration desk. Some of the black leather furniture and the potted palms placed about the lobby appeared to be new. Pearl couldn't help looking for price tags on the plants.

When Quinn and Pearl approached the desk they were greeted by a tall, elderly man in a gray sport jacket with what must be the Sherman's crest over its left breast pocket. He had thick white hair and a long, lean face with a patrician nose that was made for him to look down over. The sort of chap who would have seemed right at home in a venerable British men's club.

"Yous got a reservation?" he inquired in a Brooklyn accent.

"Wees don't," Pearl said.

Quinn gave her a warning look. Sometimes that had an effect on Pearl. Usually not.

"We're inquiring about one of your guests," he said to the clerk, and showed him identification.

The clerk gazed at the ID, then made good use of his nose. "A private detective service? Not the real cops?"

"Not yet," Quinn said. "We were hoping you'd be cooperative."

The man gazed down his long nose at Quinn for another few seconds and then shrugged. "So who's the guest?"

"Chrissie Keller," Pearl said. "I phoned about her earlier."

"Ah, yeah. You don't look nuttin' like you sounded on the phone. You sounded taller. I told you, didn't I, that she'd checked out?"

"What we were wondering," Quinn said, "is if the maid's gotten around to cleaning her room."

The desk clerk turned his back on them and punched some keys on a computer keyboard. "Keller, Chrissie. She was in room five-twelve, checked out at ten-thirty a.m. yesterday. Maid service woulda taken care of five-twelve by now."

"Do you recall if she had a lot of luggage?" Quinn asked.

"Couldn't say. But Buddy the bellhop could. He's got a photographic mind. He remembers everything."

Quinn and Pearl looked around the otherwise deserted lobby. "Do you remember where Buddy is?" Quinn asked.

The desk clerk gave him a Brooklyn-British kind of look and then went to a phone at the other end of the registration desk.

Buddy the bellhop appeared within seconds, as if he'd been waiting for his cue. He was a short, middle-aged man with a stomach paunch that ruined the effect of a blue and red uniform that made him look like an officer in Napoleon's army. It even had epaulets. He glanced from Quinn to Pearl and smiled broadly. When he reached them, he looked about in mild confusion for suitcases to be carried.

The desk clerk explained to Buddy that only information was wanted. Quinn described Chrissie Keller.

"I remember her," Buddy said. "Nice lady, tipped okay."

"Luggage?" Quinn asked.

"Big red Samsonite hard sh.e.l.l with wheels. Also a black nylon carry-on, looked like the kinda thing that might hold a notebook computer. She was wearin' jeans and a yellow silk blouse."

"What color eyes?" Pearl asked.

"One brown, one blue." Buddy grinned hugely. "Naw, I'm funnin' you there. I don't remember her eyes. The rest of it, though, you can count on it bein' right. I got a-"

"Yeah, we know."

"The suitcase was heavy. She was plannin' on bein' around for a while."

"You help her with the suitcase when she checked out?" Quinn asked.

"Naw, she just wheeled the thing out to the curb an' piled into a cab. The carry-on was slung over her arm with her purse. The purse was brown leather. Kinda scuffed. That was the last I seen of her."

Quinn thanked Buddy and turned back to the desk clerk. "Anybody been in five-twelve since Chrissie Keller?"

"Only the maid."

"Mind if we have a look?"

"At the maid?"

Pearl dead-eyed the desk clerk, which seemed to scare him.

"Don't mind at all," he said. "Yous see our rooms, you'll maybe wanna stay here sometime. But yous won't find nuttin'-not the way our maids clean up after a guest."

"Still," Quinn said with a smile, "you never know."

"I guess not," the desk clerk said. "Yous might find lint or a hair or somethin'."

"You'd be surprised," Quinn said.

"No, I wouldn't. I watch all those forensic crime-scene shows on TV, read mysteries about how crimes are solved." He appeared thoughtful. "There a crime been committed here?"

"We're trying to find out," Quinn said.

Buddy accompanied them in the elevator and led them to 512, where he opened the door and then hung around as if expecting a tip. Habit, Quinn supposed.

"The bathroom's in there," Buddy said, motioning toward a closed door. "There's your television. There's a refrigerator right there stocked with-"

Quinn gave him a look that shut him up. Buddy grinned, shrugged, and left the room.

Quinn and Pearl looked around. The room was neatly arranged; it had to be, since most of the furniture was fastened to the walls. The maid had indeed been thorough. The scent of Lemon Pledge still hung in the air, and there wasn't the slightest trace of dust.

Pearl checked the tiny bathroom and found it smelling of bleach and gleaming and spotless. Even the grout between the blue tiles looked clean. She wished she had a bathroom like it. Hers was about the same size but was comparatively cruddy.

Quinn was impressed. "The maid emptied the waste-baskets, and it looks like she polished their insides," he said.

"Waste of time," Pearl said.

Quinn wasn't sure if she meant the wastebasket polis.h.i.+ng or the room search.

They went over the room thoroughly, but not with much enthusiasm, deftly staying out of each other's way because they'd done this dozens of times in dozens of rooms.

The desk clerk was right: the maid's thoroughness had neutered the room when it came to anything like a clue. There was nothing that might be of help. Not lint, not a hair. Nothing.

"Chrissie's away clean," Pearl said. "She did a number on us."

Quinn knew she was right. But what kind of number?

And why?

Two blocks away from where Quinn and Fedderman stood, a man was standing staring in the window of a luggage shop.

A trip to someplace interesting, where I've never been before. That's what I should do, take a trip. Pack a bag and get out of this city, at least for a while. Someplace in Europe. Or the Caribbean, if I can find an island that- Air brakes hissed, drawing his attention.

He watched the young woman step down from the bus that had stopped near the corner. She was in her thirties, with dark eyes and luxurious shoulder-length dark hair that bounced with her generous b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she took the long, lurching step down to the pavement. Her dress was pale green, made of some kind of thin material that clung to her body in the light summer breeze.

How gracefully she moved. So like a cat. Her high heels flashed as she extended her long legs with each stride, her calf muscles working like silk.

Dancer's legs, he thought. Maybe she was a dancer. Maybe she was- he thought. Maybe she was a dancer. Maybe she was- He realized he'd begun following the woman without even thinking about it. As if some part of him had already made the decision that their lives and her death should converge.

No, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!

He stopped walking, using all his willpower to avert his eyes from the woman.

I don't do that anymore.

I don't even have a hard-on.

He turned around and started walking in the opposite direction the woman was going. He didn't even glance back at her for one last look. One additional memory of her he could recall in detail at least for a while. He walked faster, lengthening his stride, pounding his heels down hard as if testing the resiliency of the sidewalk.

I don't do that anymore.

I don't have to do that anymore.

But he found himself recalling the way her hair and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had bounced as she'd stepped down out of the bus.

He smiled. Even though that part of his life was over and he was somebody else now, it did no harm to remember. To think about how things were, or even how they might have been. Even how they might be. After all, he wasn't the one who'd stirred up the past and started the thoughts playing like movie scenes in his mind. Scenes that he was in or was simply observing, looking at them usually from above, as if he'd been a spirit in the room.

Thoughts...

Thoughts never hurt anyone. How could they? They weren't real. You couldn't even touch them.

And sometimes you couldn't stop them.

But he did stop thinking about leaving the city.