Urge to Kill

“Something wrong, Pearl?” Quinn asked from behind his desk.

Pearl didn’t look at him. “My mother.”

“She okay?” Quinn asked in a concerned voice, misunderstanding.

“She is. I’m not.”

“Oh.” Quinn knew about the relationship between Pearl and her mother. “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and pour yourself a cup of coffee? It’ll help you calm down.”

Now Pearl aimed her laser look at him. “Coffee does that? Calms you down?”

Fedderman was grinning. He held up his own cup, and then held out his free hand to demonstrate its steadiness.

“If you don’t want a cup, then we’ll get down to business,” Quinn said in a voice that Pearl knew. His warning voice. She could take her bad mood further and risk serious confrontation, or she could back off. He shot a look at Fedderman, too, causing the grin to fade. “Either one of you seen the papers this morning?”

“Haven’t had time,” Pearl said. “Had to subway and walk all the damned way over here.”

Quinn stared at the folded newspapers on his desk, as if the sight of Pearl might be too much for him. “Feds?”

“Haven’t seen them, either. Had to drive, fight traffic, call on the cell phone,” Fedderman explained, looking at Pearl.

“What you can do with your cell phone—”

“Did you say hello to your mother for me?” Quinn interrupted. That was his calm-but-about-to-explode tone.

Pearl seemed to adjust herself to a calmer setting. “I always do,” she lied.

Quinn looked at her, regretting that she was so damned beautiful when she got her ire up. Seeing her that way reminded him of what he’d lost.

“Okay,” he said, and opened the top paper, the Post, and held it up so the headline showed: .25-CALIBER KILLER STALKS CITY. Then Quinn held up the Times to demonstrate the same news in a less sensational fashion.

“Leaky NYPD,” Pearl said.

“It didn’t take the media long to give our guy a moniker,” Fedderman said. “Next we’ll see an artist’s depiction of the killer, even though nobody’s seen him.”

“The artist will be working off Helen Iman’s description,” Quinn said. Helen was the police profiler he knew would sooner or later be in on the case. While he wasn’t a fan of profilers, in truth he had to admit that Helen might be an exception.

“So the media shit storm Renz feared is on us,” Fedderman said. “What now?”

“We drive over and look at 149 West Seventy-ninth Street,” Quinn said.

“What’s that?” Pearl asked.

“The city-paid-for office space Renz promised us.” He stood up from behind his desk. “We ready?”

“Ready for anything,” Fedderman said. He gulped down the remainder of his coffee and put cup and saucer aside.

“I already put the murder books and notes in a box in the trunk of my car,” Quinn said. “We can drive it over, come back for the unmarked later if we need it. Parking’s hell in that part of town.”

Pearl and Fedderman stood up. Pearl wished they could stop somewhere so she could get a cup of coffee, but decided against mentioning it.

They moved toward the living room and the door.

“I always liked your mother,” Fedderman said as they were leaving. “The few times we met, she seemed like a real lady.”

“She mentioned to me she hated your guts,” Pearl said.

She didn’t look at Fedderman as they went outside into the heat. There was no doubt in her mind the bastard would be smiling.

Quinn, she noticed, had both newspapers folded under his arm. He was irked, but at the same time oddly energized by the sharper focus of the media and the name they’d attached to the murderer. The .25-Caliber Killer.

Name something and make it real. Make it more threatening.

The dial had been turned up. The pressure increased.

It was the kind of pressure Quinn feasted on.

14

Quinn was having difficulty concentrating on his driving. Having Pearl so near him in the car was affecting him more than he’d imagined.

He understood why she felt the way she did about her mother, but Quinn rather liked the woman. She could be a pest, insistent and insufferable, but she had her finer points. Would Pearl be like her when she grew older? Maybe. Would Quinn still love Pearl? Probably. Simply being so near to Pearl, smelling the subtle combination of her soap and shampoo, being aware of the energy that seemed to emanate from her compact and curvaceous form, made him understand that he would never really get over her. That didn’t mean they’d ever be able to coexist as lovers, but he’d always feel something for her. As for Pearl, it seemed to Quinn that she’d completely gotten over him. He wondered if he could do anything about that.

“You missed your turn,” Fedderman said from the backseat.

His thoughts interrupted, Quinn glanced over and saw that he’d passed West Seventy-ninth Street.

“Woolgathering?” Pearl asked.

“Whatever that means,” Quinn said.

He drove around the block and parked by a fireplug in front of the building where Renz had found them city-provided office space.