Mister X Part 52

"You've realized what he was for years, so why'd you try to keep a secret with him in the know?"

"I shouldn't have. Let Cindy Sellers have her way."

"She usually gets it," Quinn said.

"I wanted to keep it out of the media, didn't want more questions, more attention drawn to the fact that we carried this thing in the cold-case file for years."

"What are we talking about?" Quinn asked.

"Keller's torso. His nipples have been removed. And there's a large letter X X carved into his chest." carved into his chest."

"Jesus!"

"The wounds are recent, and were almost certainly self-inflicted."

Quinn stood quietly, putting it all together.

"Jesus!" he said again.

Renz was saying something else, but Quinn hung up. He knew the real reason Renz wanted Keller's self-inflicted injuries kept secret. It was critical to his political ambitions that Chrissie remain the latest and last Carver. He wanted the case to stay on the record exactly as it was, wrapped tight and neatly filed away, a fading part of the city's ign.o.ble past.

Quinn looked at Addie, who had the answers. Who'd from the start had most of them.

"There you have it," she said. "Insofar as anyone ever has all of anything."

"Keller might have been the Carver all the way through. Chrissie might have been innocent."

"Might," Addie said. "We'll never know for sure."

"Other things we can know for sure," Quinn said.

"But are you sure you want to know them?"

"I'm sure I have to," Quinn said.

82.

Addie finished her drink and then stared at the ice cubes, as if there might be some revelation there now that the liquid was gone.

"Nothing between us was real," Addie said.

Quinn nodded. "I somehow knew that from the beginning."

"But you didn't know you knew."

"I still can't be sure. Not yet."

"Yes, you can," Addie said. "Nothing's been real for me since Edward Keller. I'm afraid nothing ever can be. I followed him to Detroit, then from Detroit to New York, unsure he was the one who attacked me, who later killed Tiffany. I knew he wasn't someone named Edward Archer, though I wasn't sure he was the Carver. But I became sure."

"Why did he try to kill you, of all people, in Detroit?"

"My watching him must have attracted his attention, and something about me disturbed or attracted him."

"But why, after attacking you, did he come here to New York to stalk and kill more victims?"

"I don't know for sure," Addie said. "Maybe it was because he was almost caught and he realized the risk he was taking, so he wanted a bigger city to disappear in. Or a larger pool of prospective victims. Maybe he followed Tiffany in New York. Maybe there was something special about me. I'd been a surprise to him, and he ran from it. He was sure I hadn't seen his face, and he wouldn't know I recognized his voice. I couldn't prove anything. After he killed Tiffany, he'd be safe. No one would believe Chrissie in a he-said, she-said confrontation about childhood molestations, even if she did work up the courage to speak out. He didn't see her as a threat, and I'd hardly make a credible witness. But when he became successful and got political ambitions, he had to eliminate all his vulnerabilities, including Chrissie, which is why he agreed to your request to act as bait. He wanted to draw Chrissie to him so he could kill her."

"You joined the case after Lisa Bolt disappeared," Quinn said.

"At that point I hadn't seen her. I a.s.sumed she was the real Chrissie, and I was afraid she might recognize me. Just like I was afraid Erin Keller might recognize me."

Quinn stared at her. "So that was the reason for the reading gla.s.ses when Erin first came into the office. Why their lenses were unground."

"You noticed that. It's just like you to notice things."

"Addie Price wasn't the first time you changed your name, was it?"

"No," she said, lowering her head and smiling sadly.

When she looked up at him there were tears in her eyes. Her mascara was running.

"Are you satisfied now?" she asked.

"That's a h.e.l.l of a question."

She laughed. From somewhere she produced a wadded tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

After an awkward silence, Quinn said, "What Keller did to himself...why?"

Addie shrugged.

"Guilt," she said.

"Shame," Quinn said.

"They're twins," she said.

83.

Cindy Sellers's throat was dry. So fascinated was she by Quinn and Addie Price's conversation that she'd almost forgotten to breathe.

As she listened to the recording from the digital micro-recorder she'd secretly planted in Quinn's apartment, she knew she had a major story, the kind that could make a career. Of course it had been obtained unethically, not to mention illegally, but her standing as a journalist should prevent her from having to reveal her source.

Like Pearl, Sellers had researched Addie Price and found a false record of her birth.

Unlike Pearl, she'd continued her research and discovered the real reason; the reason for both name changes. And the reason why the Carver inexplicably stopped his attack on Geraldine Knott in Detroit. Why her a.s.sailant couldn't couldn't bring himself to kill Geraldine. bring himself to kill Geraldine.

Geraldine wasn't Geraldine.

Not even close.

The question now, in Sellers's mind and balanced in her conscience, was whether she should reveal the recorded conversation she'd just heard.

She searched her soul for almost ten seconds before deciding to phone in the story.

Addie Price had missed her flight, so the next day Quinn drove her to Kennedy. They had a good-bye drink in an airport bar before walking to the security checkpoint.

They shook hands, and then Addie impulsively kissed Quinn's cheek and turned away to join the security line. She didn't look back at Quinn. He didn't look back at her.

Back in his apartment, Quinn sat at his desk, fired up a cigar, and got out his yellow legal pad.

He found a stubby yellow pencil.

Beneath Computer nerd's software program, seven names, Computer nerd's software program, seven names, he wrote: he wrote: Pearl attacked, Yancy killed.Lisa Bolt checks herself out of hospital.Edward Keller agrees to come to NYC.Lisa Bolt says Keller is in NYC to kill Chrissie so he can keep past hidden.Keller not in hotel as agreed.Pearl finds Lisa Bolt badly beaten by Keller.Lisa gives police address she gave to Keller.All h.e.l.l. Keller, Chrissie die.

Quinn leaned back and surveyed the entire page. Something was still wrong. It wasn't anything in his notes.

There was something missing.

He realized what just as the phone rang, startling him out of his reverie. As he lifted the receiver, he saw on caller ID that Renz was on the line.

"I thought you oughta know," Renz said, "the Detroit cops found a hidden room in Keller's bas.e.m.e.nt in Detroit. There was a freezer there, with plastic bags containing guess what?"

"Grisly souvenirs," Quinn said.

"What looked like shredded flesh," Renz said. "Each bag was labeled. We're waiting for DNA, but blood type and other forensics make it just about certain the labels are correct and what we've got are the severed nipples of all the Carver victims up to and including Tiffany Keller."

"He killed his own daughter."

"People do that kinda thing, Quinn. Especially under the circ.u.mstances. She was a liability."

"Yeah. Look at the good it did him."

"He was a sicko," Renz said. "End of story."

"I guess you're right, Harley."

"Time for you to stop guessing, Quinn. Get drunk and get laid, if you're not too old to get it up, and put this one away."

"I'll do that, Harley. Maybe not all of it."

Quinn hung up.

He turned his attention back to the legal pad, thinking back on his conversation with Renz.

...up to and including Tiffany Keller.

The souvenirs in Keller's freezer in Detroit were all older than five years, stopping with the macabre reminders of Tiffany.

Where were the missing body parts from the later victims?

If Keller had resumed his activities as the Carver, why wouldn't he have resumed his old M.O.? His hotel room, his belongings, had all been thoroughly searched. No body parts.

If Chrissie had committed the later murders and taken the nipples as souvenirs, which seemed unlikely, where were they? Had she simply removed them so she could emulate the Carver's M.O. and then disposed of them?

That was the most likely thing, Quinn decided. And if they hadn't been destroyed, actually finding them, proving what he thought to be true, would be too much of a long shot, especially if it meant reopening a case virtually everyone wanted to stay closed. And of course the courts would be in the position of having to prove that Keller and Chrissie hadn't hadn't murdered anyone after Tiffany's death. Not easy to do, since both were dead. murdered anyone after Tiffany's death. Not easy to do, since both were dead.

So the case would remain closed. Everyone involved who was still alive would have to live with that.

Quinn used the phone in his den to call Pearl's apartment.

She didn't answer, but he sat for a while and let her phone ring.

Then he abruptly hung up. He decided the loneliest sound in the world was an unanswered phone after the fifth ring.

Miles above the earth, Addie Price soared with her eyes closed. She dreamed about a sultry night and a knife blade held tightly by pinched fingers close to the point so the cuts would be shallow and seem tentative. There was a gray homeless woman in the dream, her eyes wide and glittering with horror, her sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s revealed...the snick of blade nicking bone, carving flesh. Human flesh, so fragile...so temporary.

Human flesh...first a trickle of blood, then the deluge. The others- The plane hit an air pocket, and Addie awakened, glanced about, realized where she was, and smiled.

Human flesh, so fragile...it had to be packed carefully in ice in order to be s.h.i.+pped.