Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

“Our gremlin tinkers,” Fedderman said. “Like he’s taking apart a robot to see how it’s put together.”

“How do we know he tinkers?”

“That’s what gremlins do,” Helen said. “And he was in a hurry, so he had the victims get in their bathtubs for him to protect themselves from the fire. In a rush, our Gremlin, as if he was on an assembly line doing piecework.”

“A sexual thing?” Fedderman asked.

“Gadgetry and efficiency as applied to flesh and bone,” Helen said. “We’ve all known people who’ve conducted stranger secret sex lives.”

Harold looked at her. “We have?”

Pearl said, “Shut up, Harold.”

Fedderman said, “I knew a guy with an enormous collection of Barbie dolls, and each one had a—”

“Forget it, Feds,” Pearl said.

“You guys,” Helen said, “are pathetic.”

“But they might be right,” Quinn said. “Especially when you put firebugs in the mix.”

“The hell with firebugs,” Sal grated in his bullfrog voice.

Quinn made an effort not to smile. He liked it when his detectives squabbled. Oysters and pearls.

16

When she studied him through the peephole and then opened her door to his knock, he hardly looked like a threat. A jockey-size man in built-up shoes to make him appear taller. His dark hair was long on the sides and combed back in wings that obviously existed to cover his ears. For all of that he was somehow physically appealing. There was a force about him. A certainty that drew a particular sort of woman.

Men like this, Margaret thought. They somehow know about women like me.

“You’re the man who’s been following me,” she said.

He smiled. “You’re the woman who’s been observing me following. You’ve got a lot of nerve, buzzing me in and answering my knock.”

“You took a chance coming here, yourself. For all you know, I might have considered you a rapist or burglar and shot you on the spot. I’ve done it before.”

Some of this happened to be true, but the burglar had been her ex-husband, and she’d stabbed him in the shoulder, not shot him. None of that mattered now. They’d stitched him up, and he was fine. And she’d gotten a restraining order against him.

“I was sure you wouldn’t think of me as dangerous,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not dangerous in any way. I’m sure you can read that in me.” He smiled. “You’re a good reader of men.”

“How would you know?”

“I’m a good reader of women.”

“Now you’re bullshitting, flattering yourself. That’s an ugly thing in a man.”

“If that’s true, how come you’re going to invite me in?”

“Maybe I like absurdly determined men.”

“You like men who sense right off how you are.”

“Oh? How am I?”

“A good person, but always up for adventure.”

Margaret leaned against the doorframe and looked at him for a long time. She had to look down at an angle, but that didn’t seem to bother him. The little bastard didn’t blink.

“You’ve got me pegged,” she said, realizing too late the sexual connotation.

He pretended not to notice, which helped to keep her in his corner. A real gentleman.

“If you ask me,” he said, “the world needs more like you.”

“It has more like me.”

“But they’re rare and hard to find.”

“You mean we’re rare and hard to find.”

He turned that over in his mind. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Modesty doesn’t become you.”

“That’s okay. I hardly ever become modest.”

“Do you know where the Grinder Minder is?” she asked.

“The coffee shop, yeah. Two blocks over. A pleasant walk.”

“I’m not crazy enough to invite you in,” she said, “but let’s take that walk. We can see through the lies, get to know each other better over coffee.”

“Learn what makes us tick,” he said, smiling. It was an unexpectedly beatific smile that made him, for an instant, look like a mischievous child.

“Sounds like us,” she said. She told him to wait a second while she got her purse.

They were one of only two couples in the Grinder Minder. The other couple was older, he with a scraggly gray beard and a bald head, she wearing faded jeans and a colorful tie-dyed T-shirt. There were winding tattoos on the woman’s inner wrists and up her forearms to the elbows, probably to disguise needle marks. Or maybe razor scars.

Margaret ordered a venti vanilla latte, and, amazingly, that was what he always drank. Most of the time, anyway. The killer watched Margaret’s gaze stay fixed for a few seconds on the other couple.

“Hippies lost in time,” he said.

Margaret shrugged. “As long as they’re happy.”

“Big job,” he said, “not trusting anyone over thirty when you’re over forty.”

“Drugs help,” Margaret said.

“We can get some. Pot’s easy enough to get now.”

“That’s why it’s less desirable.”

“Point taken.”

“I’m a month and a half out of rehab,” she said.

“Then we won’t do drugs. Tell you the truth, I was never big on them. My brother got screwed up on them. High on meth when he drove onto a highway and discovered too late he was on an exit ramp. Van full of teenagers hit him head-on. Three killed, including my brother. Four injured.”

“God! That’s terrible!”

He shrugged sadly, elaborately, exemplar of all the grief in the world. “You learn to live with it. There’s no choice.” He forced a smile. “Tell me about you, but nothing sad, please.”

She returned his smile and her eyes held his. “First, I think we should introduce ourselves.”

He made a big deal out of slapping his cheek, not hard, but loud enough to make the hippie woman glance over. “Good grief, you’re right,” he said. “I’m Corey.”

“Margaret.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Your mailbox down in the vestibule.”

“Of course! How sneaky of you.”

“Observant, I like to think.”

“How very you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Now tell me about Margaret. Or is it Maggie?”

“Never. Only Margaret.”

“So let me into your past, beautiful Margaret.”

She sipped her latte deliberately, looking like a woman thinking up something for a parlor game. It occurred to him that she was probably a bigger liar than he was. But certainly less convincing.

“I grew up in Baltimore,” she began. “We were poor but didn’t know it . . .”

He stopped paying attention, figuring it was probably all a string of lies anyway.

“. . . And here I am doing proofreading for an advertising company.”

He raised his latte mug in a salute. “You’re to be admired, Margaret. Really!”

“Oh, not so much.”

“Don’t shortchange yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised by what’s in your future.”

So might you.

He finished his latte and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

“Should we start back?”

“Back?

“To your apartment. I have to at least show you to your door. Make sure you’re safe in this big bad city.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” And it makes sense to keep you dangling. Anticipation can work wonders.

As they walked through the lowering night he kept slightly off to the side so he could observe the rhythm of her stride. Her high heels abbreviated her steps; the clicking and clacking of her shoes on the hard sidewalk was mesmerizing. Her hips rolled slightly as she walked, her body like a sensuous metronome under perfect, relentless rhythm, meting out precisely the remainder of her life. There was something amazing about it.

The things we don’t know until it’s too late.

The Gremlin glanced up at the beautiful woman walking alongside him and felt the thrill of possession. Her lithe body kept moving to the rhythm being beaten out by her shoes. He realized he was getting an erection.

Can’t have that. Not now, not yet . . .

“You a baseball fan?” he asked.

“The Yankees, when they’re the Yankees,” she said.