Mister X by John Lutz

Author:John Lutz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Private investigators, Serial murders, Mystery & Detective, Private investigators - New York (State) - New York, New York (N.Y.), Sisters - New York (State) - New York - Death, Crime, Serial murders - New York (State) - New York, Thrillers, Mystery fiction, Quinn, Sisters, Suspense, General, Frank (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780786020263
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-09-28T06:46:30.753903+00:00

41

Traffic on Broadway slowed Pearl, but she cut over to Second Avenue, imperiled the lives of a few pedestrians, and reached Lower Manhattan in good time.

The address Quinn had given her was an old brick building with a red granite facade. There was the usual assortment of unmarked and radio cars pulled in at odd angles to the curb in front of the building, along with an ambulance. Two paramedics sat inside the ambulance with the engine running to keep the air-conditioning going. The vehicles’ emergency lights were still flashing, along with the roof bar lights of one of the radio cars.

Three uniforms were standing at the wide concrete steps leading to the entrance, two with their feet propped on the first step. Pearl flashed her shield and one of them, a young guy with a nose like de Bergerac’s, told her the floor and apartment numbers.

The victim’s apartment was close enough to the elevator that as soon as Pearl stepped out of it she was there. Fedderman and Harold Mishkin were standing in the hall outside the open apartment door. Fedderman acknowledged Pearl with a nod. Mishkin smiled wanly at her. He had the mentholated goo he used at murder scenes rubbed into his mustache beneath his nose. It was almost enough to make her eyes water.

“Quinn and Sal are inside,” Mishkin said.

So were the techs from the CSU, dusting and plucking, picking and bagging. The ballet of the white gloves. Careful where she stepped and what she touched, Pearl made her way through the apartment living room and down the hall, glancing in the bathroom to make sure that wasn’t where the body was.

Quinn and Sal Vitali were in the bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed and watching Nift, the repugnant little M.E., examining the victim. The smells of blood, feces, and the beginnings of decay were strong. Pearl understood why Mishkin had used his mentholated cream.

The victim was lying on her back nude, blood on her chest and caked black beneath her on the sheets. Her throat had been sliced almost ear to ear. Even through the blood, it was obvious that her nipples had been removed and a large X was carved on her body so that the intersection of its straight lines was between her breasts. The breasts themselves were undamaged by the X.

Pearl wondered what the bloody X could mean. X marks the spot? The victim has been canceled? Or was it an initial? Xavier?

It might be none or all those things.

Probably they would never know until they had the killer.

“Meet Joyce House,” Sal said in his deep, gravel voice. “She was a waitress at a place called the Nickel Diner. Thirty-two years old, unmarried, lived alone.”

The victim was the Carver’s type. Between twenty and forty, brown hair, attractive. Her brown eyes were fixed as a doll’s eyes. They were widened in horror though she was grinning. Her throat was grinning, anyway, where it had been slashed. Her mouth—

“What’s that in her mouth?” Pearl asked.

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