Twist (27 page)

 

 

“You watching the little sweetie shooting off her mouth?” the cop asked.

“Yeah. She’s got some guts,” Dred said.

“What she’s saying though, it’s all bullshit.”

Dred wasn’t sure what to say to that. Here he was finding himself about to defend Carlie Clark, who wanted him dead.

The cop cocked his head at him, wearing a half amused look, and half something else that Dred didn’t like.

“You’re from the two-oh, ain’t you?” the cop asked.

“You think I can get a picture through this glass?” Dred asked, raising the camera and flicking out the blade.

The cop’s gaze automatically went to the tinted window.

Dred stabbed him in the heart, three times, hard.

The cop dropped without making a sound. He bled a lot at first, and then the bleeding slowed. Nearby was a container of some sort with canvas lashed over it for a lid. Dred raised an edge of the taut canvas and found the container full of yellow life preservers.

No help there.

But there was a narrow space behind the container, right now in shadow. Something shoved back there might not be noticed.

Dred quickly jammed the cop’s body into the shadowed space.

After standing up straight and glancing around, he stooped low again and removed the cop’s badge, then picked up the cop’s eight-point cap where it had dropped on the deck. For good measure, he removed some of the life preservers from beneath the canvas and laid them over the body to help conceal it. A few more to cover some blood.

Then he pinned the badge on his NYPD wind shirt and replaced his knock-off billed cap with the dead cop’s genuine NYPD cap. It had some small bloodstains on it, but they were dark like the cap, so no problem.

He wandered farther astern, glancing at his watch. The ferry would board soon.

In an odd way, things were looking up.

D
red Gant was feeling safe again, in a bar near Columbus Circle, on the substantial and densely populated island of Manhattan.

Much of the talk was about the rain, though there hadn’t been much. It was mostly a mist, actually. There was talk of a brief but genuine rain in Lower Manhattan, where it was said that a few large drops had fallen but sizzled and disappeared when they struck the street or sidewalk. For all anyone knew, it wouldn’t rain again for another month. Or, for some of us, a lifetime.

A group of twenty some things was about to leave the bar. They were milling around, making noise, and he wished they’d shut up. He was still steadying his nerves after yesterday’s close call.

She
had almost gotten him killed.

He had to admit he was unnerved by what had happened. He stared at his fingers encircling his glass. They trembled slightly.

He’d thought she was dead in every way. That she couldn’t have this kind of effect on him. Yet there was that tremor, signifying vulnerability.

“Coming with us, Gigi?”

The killer looked up from his beer.

“Gigi!” called the voice again.

Gi . . . gi
. . .

Phonetically, double what the killer wanted.
Very good
. His world was still spinning as it should.

“I’ll stay here a while,” a woman’s voice said. “Then I got important things to do.”

The half dozen or so twentysomethings made their way out the door. A few of them grinned and waved to . . . Gigi. One of the men threw her a kiss.

Dred knew fate when it stood directly in front of him and shook him by the lapels.

He found the woman who had important things to do reflected in the back bar mirror. The
G
woman. She was at one of the round tables, alone now.

His stomach clenched with fear and hate and something like lust. Without openly staring, he sized her up.

She was almost blond—certainly close enough—and her features were perfect. Blue eyes, broad cheekbones, and the sharply defined jaw line of youth. Her hair, which showed some dark roots, was worn in an unflattering cut. If she brushed it back from her forehead it would be okay.

It would do, anyway.

He swiveled slightly on his bar stool to get a better perspective.

You’ve had too much to drink
, a warning voice said.
Be careful
. It was a voice he’d come to regard with respect.

Gigi was dressed like the ones who had just left. Young executive types, probably from one of the office buildings in the area, on their way home after a day on the job. Close friends, apparently. Probably fellow employees. She was wearing a light gray skirt and a blue blouse with shoulder pads. The skirt’s matching blazer was draped over the back of her chair.

The soft look of her skin, her face so smooth and unlined, made her appear younger than the others.

Dred dismounted his stool and, drink in hand, walked toward her table. His stride was steady and straight. He thought so, anyway.

He could see her assessing him as he approached, and he read in her expression her curiosity as it tugged against her better judgment.

“Mind if my friends and I join you?” he asked. He watched as she responded to his smile the way women usually did. He was doing okay.

“I see only you,” she said. Composed. Almost disdainful. Her problem was, he knew she was putting on an act.

“There is only me. I thought that if you didn’t mind me and my friends, you surely wouldn’t mind just me.”

She cocked her head and grinned at him, looking at him as if he might be crazy, but maybe it was
good
crazy. Just the thing to cheer her up. Maybe even . . . well, who knew?

He seized the opportunity of her indecision and sat down next to her. There were two empty glasses near her. It took her a few seconds to focus on him. She might even be a little drunk.

I’ll play
, said her expression.

“You and your friends could buy me a drink,” she said.

“That’s what we had in mind.”

Dred motioned, and one of several white-aproned women behind the bar worked the pass-through and came over for their order.

“The same for the lady,” he said. “I’ll nurse this beer.”

The server gave him a look, knowing what he was up to. Dred couldn’t care less.

Gigi ordered another Grey Goose and water on the rocks.

“Nothing for your friends?” Gigi asked, as the server walked away.

“They’re teetotalers.”

“Not like us.” She finished what little was left of her previous drink. Mostly diluted booze and oval remnants of ice.

She placed her new glass on its coaster, which was puddled from overuse. Neither of them said anything, and he let the silence gain substance and weight. He knew if he made her speak first, something good might come out.

“Would you believe,” she said, “that I got fired today?”

Ho-ho!
“That’s terrible.”

He felt his facial muscles work into the expression he’d selected.
So concerned!

Gigi gave an elaborate shrug, but looked for a second as if she might cry.
Such conflict
.

“It happens,” she said. “Like catching a cold. Sometimes you catch unemployment. I tell myself that, anyway.”

“What kind of job was it?”

“Human resources.”

“Sounds like something that provides hospitals with body parts.”

“They used to call us personnel managers.”

“You were a personnel manager?”

“Not exactly that. I didn’t have the seniority. But I worked in HR for Homestead Properties.”

“I’ve heard of them,” he lied.

“Prob’ly seen their ads.” She moved to pick up her glass and lifted what was left of her previous drink instead. When she saw that it contained mostly melting ice, she simply gave it a circular motion so the one-time cubes swirled around. Condensation from the glass dribbled down her arm. “Is it getting hot in here?” she asked.

“It must be you.” He winked. “I’m surprised everything around you doesn’t melt.”

She ignored the compliment. “This is the unluckiest day of my life.”

He laughed. “I should be hurt.”

“No, no, no . . .” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I meant . . . at work.”

“Maybe we can change your luck.”

The server dropped by and took Gigi’s almost empty glass and moved her fresh drink over so it was in front of her.

That brought a smile.

“He never showed,” Pearl said. “The bastard had us all figured out and never set foot on the island.”

“We can’t say that for sure,” Quinn said. He was at his desk at Q&A. Pearl was pacing, not so much pissed off as frustrated. It was still warm in the office, and he watched a bead of perspiration run down her tanned forearm. She idly slapped at it as if it were a tiny insect.

Fedderman, the only other Q&A detective working late into the evening, came over from where he’d tricked Mr. Coffee into making tea. He sipped from his initialized mug. “Maybe the security cameras picked up something.”

“They haven’t revealed it yet,” Quinn said. “Jerry Lido is still going over them with the Harbor Unit and island security.” Lido was Q&A’s high-tech expert. If there was something suspicious on the tapes, he’d spot it. And he’d know how to get the most out of it.

“I doubt they’ll find anything useful,” Pearl said. “Let’s face it—Helen was wrong about this one. There was no irresistible magnetism rooted in the killer’s youth that drew him toward Lady Liberty.” She stopped pacing, perched on the edge of her desk, and crossed her arms. “I never had high hopes for this from the beginning.”

“There was never a guarantee,” Quinn said.

“Not a lot of those in life,” Fedderman added. “In fact, none.”

For the next twenty minutes thunder rolled like cannon fire across the heated city, but no rain fell.

T
he killer watched Gigi Beardsley (which turned out to be her name) open her big blue eyes, and then open them wider.

He studied her face as it dawned on her:
I’ve never drunk so much that I passed out.

She struggled to reassert sanity and logic.

Slowly, realization began to enter her mind, along with fear. Then it came with a rush. The pieces tumbled into place, and in order.
There’s no way out of my predicament.
Her soul was in her eyes. He watched her closely. This was one of his favorite moments.

But she hadn’t surrendered to her fate. Not quite yet.

Brad had moved out of sight, but she still sensed his presence.

Gigi experimentally tried to move her right arm, which was raised over her head, and couldn’t. Of course, it wasn’t exactly raised, because she was lying flat on her back in her bed. Her left arm was stretched to its limit and bound with gray tape to the brass headboard, like her right. Her legs were spread wide, and she knew her ankles would be similarly bound even before she tried to move her legs and confirmed that she couldn’t.

She was as nude as she’d been when he’d carried her into the bedroom.

She did remember that. Also, before that a walk, holding hands. A subway ride?

Maybe.

She couldn’t recall even being placed on the bed.

How the hell did they even get in here? But she knew the answer to that. She’d mentioned to him that, even though she’d been fired, she still had a master key for apartments like this, for the lockbox that real estate companies used so any employee could show any listed, unoccupied property. She’d forgotten to turn the key in, and no one at Homestead had asked her for it.

The killer saw this as another nudge by destiny. Gigi would be his second victim with access to someone else’s apartment; obviously this was fated to happen. Not that Manhattan wasn’t rich with people occupying other people’s apartments, usually subletting or borrowing. New Yorkers tended to travel or move often, and why should the most expensive commodity in the city, space, be allowed to sit vacant?

Gigi recalled an acute sense of trespass and betrayal when letting him, and herself, into this listed unit. Neither of them belonged here, even though she’d figured the company owed her something more than paltry severance pay and a good-bye. The use of this apartment might lessen the debt.

And heighten the sexual experience.

Had they had sex? She couldn’t remember. She
felt
as if they had.

She tugged with this limb and that, twisting her head around, exploring again to see how firmly she was bound by the unyielding thick tape.

Very firmly.

Brad—or so he called himself—came into sight again, not so much shocking her as making her mind more muddled. He was naked except for what looked like surgeon’s rubber gloves, the kind you could almost see through and were like a second skin. And he was wearing blue plasticized paper booties of the sort that surgeons wore in operating rooms.

“What the hell?” she almost said. It came out as more of a croak. She realized she’d shaken off enough of her sluggishness that she might muster a lusty scream. She strained to do just that. The result was the same croak. Sound that traveled about ten feet, and surely not beyond the walls.

Brad smiled down at her. “You shouldn’t drink so much. It’s bad for your complexion.”

Anger surged up in Gigi. She tried to thrash around in the bed but couldn’t manage even that. “Listen, you bastard. If you think—”

She heard a ripping sound, and he slapped her in the face, across the lips.

No! He’d
fastened
something—tape—across her mouth. He used the heel of his hand to press the tape tight to her flesh. She began breathing raggedly, forcing herself to inhale and exhale through her nose. She tried again to scream, but merely made a soft mewling sound.

He grinned, liking that. The way he was gazing down at her, studying her, gave her the chills. Kids looked that way at frogs in biology class.

Gigi tried to suppress her growing terror and make herself think.
Think!

She knew who Brad was, of course. The Lady Liberty Killer. And she knew what he did—at least what the police had released about his insane behavior. She was sure what was in store for her would be even worse.

Squirming desperately, she managed to see that the gray duct tape, that had also been used to bind her wrists and ankles to the brass headboard and footboard, was so tight that her hands and feet were turning white from loss of circulation. And they were becoming numb.

Gigi watched as he laid the large roll of tape on the bed. He bent over, and from down on the floor—probably from the big leather briefcase he had been carrying and had lugged here from the bar—he withdrew a knife. It had a long, slightly curved blade that was pointed and serrated and scared the hell out of her. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

She craned her neck and stared as he moved down along the side of the mattress, and she was sure he was going to cut her ankle.

Another thought came to her.

She heard the sound of the blade severing the tape.

Her right leg was free
, but only for a second. He gripped it with both arms and leaned hard on it so it was forced up as far as it would go. She tried to bend her leg so she could find leverage and push him away. The strain behind her knee was agonizing.

He let her struggle for a while, enjoying it, then he jammed one of his thumbs deep, deep into her calf muscle, and the leg was paralyzed by pain from the knee down. There was no strength in it. She made the strange mewling sound again as he taped her ankle next to where her wrist was bound.

He stood up straight, breathing hard and grinning. After moving around to the other side of the bed, he repeated the process with her left ankle and wrist. Remembering the pain of his probing thumb, Gigi didn’t resist.

Acting quickly and knowledgeably, he spent less than a minute on that leg.

She was left contorted and horribly exposed, and she hated Brad whatever-his-name-was with every cell of her being.

With the hate came curiosity. With the curiosity came stark terror.

What was he going to do? Mount her and rape her? Use the knife on her?

She did know she was having trouble breathing in such a taut and extreme position, and with the tape across her mouth. Each breath was a struggle, both in and out.

He sauntered back around to the other side of the bed, bent down approximately where she thought the briefcase must be, and took something else from it.

When he straightened up, she saw that he was holding a coiled black leather whip. Tiny flecks of metal glinted sharply among its braids.

He let the whip unwind to the floor, loomed over and checked her wrists and ankles to make sure they were tightly bound, and then stepped back to where she was looking up at him framed within her outspread legs.

He positioned himself carefully, hefted the whip handle in one hand, and with the other blew her a kiss. It was much like the kiss blown to her by one of her friends as he’d exited the bar with the rest of her group, leaving her alone and vulnerable.

She clenched her eyes shut. The blackness was complete. Not the tiniest amount of light entered.

The whip whistled through the air.

She tensed and felt it cut the air inches above her taut flesh.

It whistled again and did not miss.

 

 

Quinn’s desk phone was jangling. The one on the landline he refused to replace. Fedderman stopped drinking tea in mid sip. Pearl quit bitching about Helen being wrong.

Quinn picked up the phone, said the caller had reached Q&A Investigations, and then was silent.

Pearl watched his expression change and she became afraid.

A full minute passed, and he placed the black receiver back in its cradle without having said a word.

“Something important?” Fedderman asked.

Quinn let out a long breath. “That was Renz. The ferry that runs to and from Liberty Island, they found a dead cop on it.”