Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

The subway surprised him and wasn’t crowded. He sat near one of the doors, the jacket folded in his lap, his hand resting on it so he could feel the tiny package inside.

63

Eddie’s wife, Kellie, watched Eddie hang up his red uniform jacket and brush it off. He was always careful to hang it neatly in the closet when he was finished with work for the day.

After brushing the jacket, he used a sticky roller to go over it and lift off any dust or hair or dandruff that might have collected during his shift. Satisfied, he started to walk into the living room, when he remembered the package. He got it from his jacket pocket, sighed, and went into the living room.

Kellie went into the kitchen. “Want a beer?” she called.

Eddie called back that he did and carried the package to the secretary desk, where unpaid bills were stacked in chronological order. He sat down at the desk and dropped the writing surface.

Kellie came in from the kitchen, carrying two bottles of Heineken. She placed one of the bottles on the desk, on a square cork coaster advertising Guinness stout. Held the other bottle by its neck.

“A cop left here a little while ago,” she said.

Eddie wasn’t surprised. “Figures,” he said. “Some woman in an upper floor got herself badly hurt today.”

“Killed, is what the cop said. He was a big guy, tough-looking in a nice way, if you know what I mean.”

Eddie didn’t.

He looked seriously at her, but calmly. Letting her know that, just in case, he, the alpha male, had everything under control. “Accidental?”

“From what I heard, it’s murder,” Kellie said. “I guess that’s why they’ll want to talk to us, you working there and all. He left his card.”

“Thoughtful of him,” Eddie said.

Seated at the desk, he quickly began filing those news articles he wouldn’t want Kellie or a few other people seeing. When Kellie finally understood what was going on, she was certain to be all for it. It was time for a fresh adventure. Even if she didn’t yet realize it, she was about to have a brush with good fortune.

When Eddie was done with his filing, he went to his wallet and removed the half dozen or so business cards he’d collected during the day. After placing them in a drawer with others, he cleared the desktop and slowly began unwrapping the package. Kellie stood up from the chair she’d been sitting in and wandered over to look over his shoulder.

The package contained a small music box that looked like an antique. On its porcelain top was the painted figure of a beautiful woman in a white gown, seated on the lap of a prosperous-looking Edwardian gentleman with a long beard.

There was a small key taped to the bottom of the music box. Eddie found the edge of the cellophane tape and turned it back with his thumbnail. He sat with the key in one hand, the miniature music box in the other.

His wife Kellie hadn’t moved. She remained staring curiously at the music box. It looked genuinely old. And harmless enough. And valuable in an Antiques Roadshow sort of way.

“That filigree around the edges looks like real gold,” she said.

“Maybe it is,” Eddie said.

“Wind it,” she said. “See if it still works.”

Eddie didn’t need much encouragement. He was the curious sort.

Kellie watched as he inserted the tarnished key in its slot in the side of the box, then gave it a few tentative turns. The box ticked and whirred, and then began playing some song she didn’t recognize. The kind of simple, chime-like notes shared by most of the music boxes ever made. It was faint. Couldn’t be heard unless you held it close to your ear. Even then, Eddie couldn’t place the tune.

Tired of standing, Kellie took a sip of Heineken and went over and sat down on the sofa.

Eddie looked over at her and shook his head. She watched silently as he held the music box even closer to his ear, so he could try to identify the haunting and familiar tune.

It remained faint and unidentifiable.

The tune was nothing she’d associate with what happened next. The small block of Semtex concealed in the music box, and ignited by a watch battery, sent its spark to the detonator. Eddie was holding the box close to his ear so he could hear the tune when it exploded.

It wasn’t a large or loud enough explosion to destroy everything in the room. Still, it was more than efficient, and narrowly targeted. Half of Eddie’s head was blown away, and landed halfway across the room, in Kellie’s lap.

She stood up immediately, brushing the thing onto the floor. There was no sound other than a high-pitched, constant scream, and she seemed to be moving in slow motion as she made her way to the secretary where Eddie was slumped dead and bloody. At least the ruined side of his face was turned away. Thank God for that.

She moved her right hand carefully around Eddie, not looking at him, and opened one of the secretary desk’s small drawers.

With a trembling hand she delicately reached into the drawer and withdrew Quinn’s card that he’d pressed into her hand before leaving.

She wondered if the screaming in her head would ever stop.

64

They were in the Q&A office—Quinn, Pearl, Fedderman, Lido, Helen, Sal, and Harold—engaging in what had come to be known to them as a confab of the fab. Nobody knew where the terminology had come from, but everyone assumed it had started with Harold. No one regarded such a description as totally self-effacing humor. It smacked of the truth.

“He’s going to kill again,” Helen the profiler said. “And soon.”

Quinn said, “We need to use our resources.”

“You mean Jerry and his tech genius?” Helen asked.

Jerry Lido looked at her, wondering if she was being sarcastic. He decided he didn’t give a shit.

“That might be part of it,” Quinn said. “We need to get that refined photo of the Gremlin out to every site on the Internet where it’ll be Facebooked, tweeted, and retweeted.”

“And LinkedIn,” Harold added.

Lido, slouched on a chair near the coffee brewer, said, “Sounds as if you don’t need me.”

“Just sounds that way,” Quinn said. “When I hear the word blog I think Hound of the Baskervilles. And I don’t know a sound bite from a mosquito bite.”

“So what resource are we talking about?” Helen asked. She knew about Quinn and his resources. They scared her, though she realized that sometimes she loved the thrill they provided. “Is this resource of yours legal?”

Quinn gave her the kind of smile that should itself be declared illegal. Said, “More or less.”

Great! “I am in the NYPD.”

“So are we all, temporarily.” He regarded her as if she might be growing another head. “You want out, Helen?”

“Depends on what this resource is and what you want to do with it.”

“The news media,” he said. “Specifically, Minnie Miner.”

“Marvelous!” Sal growled. “Why her?”

“She’s got moxie,” Pearl said.

“The Marvelous Minnie Miner Media Moxie plan,” Harold said.

Sal glared at him with disgust.

“Putting planning in progress,” Harold said, still in the grip of alliteration.

“There’s someone else involved,” Quinn said. “Somebody we’ve trusted before.”

“How did those times turn out?” Fedderman asked.

Quinn said, “She seems always to wind up in hospitals.”

Helen looked at him sharply. “Likes sex, heals fast?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Nancy Weaver?”

“Jackpot.”

“Every time she heals up and gets out of the hospital, she goes back to the Vice Squad,” Helen said. “She belongs in the Vice Squad. Maybe on the other side.”

“She enjoys getting the snot beat out of her,” Fedderman said.

No one disagreed. When it came to Weaver, they simply didn’t know what to think.

Helen looked around. Said to Quinn, “Everybody you’re involving in this is the sort of person who would skydive without a parachute.”