Carnage: Short Story (5 page)

Three days later a woman’s body was found on a beach in New Jersey. She’d been tortured with a knife and with cigarettes, and the initials
D.O.A.
were carved in her forehead.

Her name was Alma Fenster, and it took Jerry Lido only a few hours to determine that, other than their torture and death at the hands of the same killer, she wasn’t connected with any of the other victims.

“Whatever they had in common is the same as with a lot of women,” Lido said. “They were all in their twenties, all lived alone and were real or bottled blondes. There are no other suspects in their deaths—or at least none more so than the killer who carved his calling card in their foreheads. None of them were fabulously rich or depressingly poor. None of them were in any way famous.”

“We could say they were all attractive,” Quinn said. “And all were tortured, murdered, and mutilated by the same fanatic. None of them was raped.”

“This sicko gets off in other ways,” Sal said.

“No semen was found,” Harold said. “But he might have used a condom to do . . . whatever he does.”

“Can’t get it up,” Sal said.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Quinn cautioned.

“No,” Helen agreed, “not for sure. He might simply prefer his other kind of sex. The torture and death bring him relief.”

“He tortures them with cigarettes,” Fedderman said, “but we never find cigarette butts.”

“He knows about DNA,” Sal said. “Like just about everybody who watches cop TV or goes to the movies to see
Godfather Twelve.
”

“Or
Rocky Forty.
” Helen said.

“Or
The Hobbit and the Obfuscation of Evidence,
” Harold said.

“What does that mean?” Fedderman asked.

Quinn said, “He means we have plenty of evidence, but we don’t know how to read it.”

“Except for the fact that the killer skipped New York, where we expected him to kill,” Lido said. “And the knight is the only chess piece that can jump over other pieces.”

“New Jersey is south of New York,” Quinn pointed out.

“Think time and sequence instead of geography,” Helen said. “New York was the most likely place for him to make his next kill. His kind of big apple. Instead he chose another, safer place.”

Quinn rubbed his chin. “Do you really think he’s that devious?”

“Oh, yes,” Helen said.

The temperature made it into the nineties the next morning and stayed there. The sky was cloudless. Drought threatened to attack New York along with the heat. The air conditioners at Q&A never stopped running. One of them dripped condensation into a green rubber bucket, placed to protect the bare hardwood floor. Each drop of water into the bucket was louder than the last.

Like the previous brown package, this latest one contained two chess pieces. But this time they were knights.

Helen uncrossed her arms and stood up from where she was perched on the edge of Pearl’s desk.

“Anybody here
not
know how to play chess?” she asked.

When no one answered she went on, “Anyone good at it?”

“
Really
good?” Quinn asked.

“Competent would do.”

“I’m a poker player,” Sal said.

“I’m really good at chess,” Jerry Lido said, from over by his computer.

“What to know in this case,” Helen said, “is that the knight has a special ability, and a restriction. While it’s the only chess piece that can move over other pieces, while doing so it has to move either two squares in any direction, and then one square at a right angle, either way. Or one square in any direction, then two squares at a right angle, either way.”

“I think we all know that much,” Sal growled.

Lido called up a map on his computer, and they gathered around it.

“He’s going to skip New York again,” Lido said, “just as you described the last time, Helen.”

“And the two knights means he might be doubling his distances.”

“That’s the way he thinks,” Quinn said.

Lido measured the distances. “If he doubles his distances, then right angles east,” he said, “that puts him out to sea.” He sat back. “He’s got to go left, so he’s going to kill in Maine, on the mainland.”

“What about water? He always kills on beaches, or somewhere else where he and the victim are near water.”

“Plenty of swimming pools in Maine,” Harold said.

“And lakes,” Sal added.

Quinn rubbed his chin and studied the area Lido had delineated by bordering it with red ink. The killer didn’t know it, but the noose was about to tighten.

“We’ll call motels and lodges in the area,” Quinn said.

“That’s almost half of Maine,” Helen pointed out.

“We’ll alert the law in those places, let them spread the word in their jurisdictions.”

“What if he kills her in her home or apartment?”

“She’ll be from New York,” Quinn said, “even if he kills her in Maine.”

Helen smiled sadly. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be thumbing his nose at us.” She shifted to face Quinn and pointed. “At you.”

“Is it that important to him?” Sal asked.

“All-important,” Helen said.

Quinn said nothing.

They spent the rest of the morning working the phones.

It was nine o’clock the next morning when Quinn got the call on his cell phone. He and Pearl were driving toward Creighton County, Maine, the center of the area where Lido had calculated the killer would take his next victim.

His iPhone identified the caller as anonymous, but somehow Quinn knew who it was.

“I’m having fun,” the voice said. “Are you?”

And the connection was broken.

Quinn was aware of Pearl sitting straight up beside him, listening.

“It was him,” Quinn said. “Taunting. Playing games.” He didn’t have to remind Pearl that this was the sicko who had taped her rigid and silent as a log and then stuffed her under a motel bed with a dead maid.

They drove along for a long time, the only sound the ticking of the tires over tarred highway seams. Then Quinn’s cell phone chimed again.

When he saw that the caller was Creighton County Sheriff Will Chalmers his heart picked up a beat and his foot eased farther down on the accelerator. Chalmers was a former Iowa Sheriff who’d retired and moved to Maine. Quinn had met him, liked him, trusted him.

Careful to keep his speeding and rocking black Lincoln Town Car on the road, he pressed the cell to the side of his head. Said simply, “Quinn.”

“I’m calling from the Antler Lodge,” Chalmers said. He sounded excited, but holding it in. “They had a guest who thought she heard a woman scream. When the Inn manager went to investigate, he was stabbed to death. He lived long enough to call emergency on his cell phone. A woman in the room was dead. Carved up and burned with cigarettes. Looked like one of the cigarettes touched her cloth gag and burned it through so she could make some noise. Didn’t last long, though. Asshole slit her throat.”

“You sure it was—”

“He’d gotten around to carving a
D
on her forehead.” Chalmers let Quinn digest that news, then said, “Listen, Quinn, your killer’s on the run in the woods. He’s hemmed in between the law and the lake. Case you don’t know, that’s Creighton Lake.”

Pearl had moved closer to Quinn. She wanted to hear every word of this phone call. She reached for the printout of Lido’s map with motels and lodges on it and spread it out on her lap. They needed the quickest route possible.

He heard the map rattle in her lap as she pointed at a turn coming up.

Chalmers spoke. “Antler Lodge is—”

“I know where it is,” Quinn said. He didn’t mention the “catch me if you can” phone call from the killer.

“You hurry, Quinn, and you could maybe get in on this.”

Quinn hurried.

The old black Lincoln was like a ghost on the highway, and Quinn was Death on a mission.

Quinn
vs.
D.O.A.—the final showdown is yet to come!

Don’t miss

FRENZY

Coming from Pinnacle in October 2014

A multiple Edgar and Shamus Award winner—including the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award—John Lutz is the author of over 30 novels. His novel
SWF Seeks Same
was made into the hit movie
Single White Female
(1992), starring Bridget Fonda, and later remade as
The Roommate
(2011), starring Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester, and
The Ex
was a critically acclaimed HBO feature. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and Sarasota, Florida. In describing his serial-killer thrillers, John Lutz says: “I’m trying to provide readers with the kind of roller-coaster ride that will scare them a lot but compel them to buy another ticket.”

His website is johnlutzonline.com.