Urge to Kill

He entered an office building whose lobby, lined with closed shops, ran through to the opposite block. Without pausing, he walked though it and out the opposite tinted glass doors, then doubled back outside, observing all the way. He was reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed.

What he wanted to do was lose himself in the city before nine o’clock.

The morning was warm and still, and with a slight overcast that would burn off by noon. Right now shadows were muted and the light seemed evenly distributed. Shooter’s weather. As he strode along the sidewalk, Quinn was aware of the weight of the Springbok revolver in one suit-coat pocket, his cell phone in the other.

Mustn’t get them confused, he cautioned himself with a smile.

My God! Helen and Zoe are right. At least a part of me is enjoying this.

Though he didn’t think he was being followed, the tension was still there. His back muscles were tight, and his antennae were out for anything unusual, anything that might spell danger. He was moving through the city in a kind of hyperawareness. It was a strain that would eventually take its toll.

The trick, he soon realized, was to stay among people, but not so many that they provided cover to fire from and then escape into.

Stop thinking defensively. You be the one to use crowds for cover, to look for the killer and apprehend him, to take him down if necessary without killing anyone else.

Quinn was just beginning to realize how difficult that would be.

He didn’t want to keep pounding the pavement wearing himself out, and just in case he was at the moment being stalked, he didn’t want to become a still target, whatever the time.

On First Avenue he saw a bus preparing to stop for a knot of people standing in front of a bank. At the last second, he boarded and fed in his change. He found a seat away from the window, near the back of the bus, and settled in for his ride uptown.

The roar of the bus’s engine, the rhythm of accelerating and stopping, allowed him to relax. Manhattan was a big island. It wouldn’t be easy for hunter and prey to come together. The killer would be waiting and watching at points where his quarry might show—workplace, apartment, the near proximities of friends and associates, known haunts. That was part of the problem. Quinn knew practically nothing about his prey, and didn’t know how much his prey knew about him. He was beginning to catch on as to how this game was played. He would at some point have to actively hunt. Hunter could become prey in an instant.

He glanced at his watch. Almost nine o’clock.

He was fair game.

74

Dr. Alfred Beeker’s blond assistant Beatrice was on duty behind her desk in the anteroom when Quinn arrived at the doctor’s Park Avenue office. She was the only one in the room. A mug of coffee and a half-eaten cinnamon roll sat on a white paper napkin on her desk. The whole place smelled like cinnamon.

She looked up at Quinn and appeared frightened. Had Beeker told her about Quinn? Was Beatrice herself part of the S&M lifestyle that Beeker embraced?

“Is Doctor Beeker in?” Quinn asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “the doctor’s with a patient.” Doing a nice job of pretending not to remember Quinn.

“In his office?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to look in on him.”

Now Beatrice looked alarmed. Beeker must have put a word in her ear about Quinn. She glanced back at the door, then at Quinn, weighing her chances of stopping him from barging in on Beeker and not liking them.

“I need to see him,” Quinn said.

“I told you, he’s—”

“You don’t understand,” Quinn said. “I only want to see him. I won’t even say hello, if you don’t want me to.”

She stood up and faced him with her arms crossed. Quinn admired her spunk.

“I’m not going to go away until I see him,” Quinn said. “Which way would be less all-around trouble? If you called in and asked him to step out here for a moment, or if I barged in while he’s in the middle of a session with a patient?”

“What if I call the police?”

“You remember me, dear. The police?” He showed her his shield, though he was sure she already knew who he was.

“Why didn’t you say in the beginning this was police business?”

“I wanted to see how cooperative you’d be.”

“I’d say you just like to play games,” she said. Not angrily, though.

“You’ve got me there.”

She sat back down, plucked the receiver from her desk phone, and pushed a button. Then she turned her back on Quinn and talked softly enough that he couldn’t understand her.

A few seconds after she’d hung up, the large door on the wall behind the reception desk opened, and Beeker stepped into the anteroom. He glared at Quinn, and his face turned a mottled red. Plenty angry, Dr. Alfred Beeker. Again, though, Quinn noted the doctor was unafraid.