Urge to Kill

“Sounds great. I’ll buy the wine on the way there.”

He wants to keep me drinking.

“Maybe we can have a treasure hunt,” he said.

“I think it’d be better if we sailed around a bit first.”

He wounded her with a smile, then sipped his scotch. “You’re the pirate.” He lowered his glass and regarded her. “If you’re worried about the rape and plunder part,” he said, “don’t.”

Terri smiled and rested a hand on his arm. “I would never plunder you,” she said.

He downed his scotch and said, “Damn it!”

John Riley had finally drunk enough wine that the voices were stilled. An hour after it got dark, he made his shambling way into the passageway between the Honeysuckle Restaurant and the Antonian Hotel. There were some black plastic trash bags piled against the hotel’s brick wall. Riley was pretty sure there wouldn’t be much of value in them, but they might make a comfortable enough bed for the night.

He still had half a bottle of the cheap wine he’d bought with what he’d been able to beg on the street. Breakfast had been half a cheeseburger he’d seen someone throw away in the trash receptacle at the busy corner down the block, and he hadn’t eaten since. The truth was, he wasn’t hungry. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe the spot on his lung, the one that doctor had told him about last year, had developed into some kind of disease that was making him thin. Or maybe it was old age. Riley was what…sixty-three? Or four? Whatever, anything over fifty was old for the streets.

Riley stopped halfway down the passageway and grinned. This was good. It looked as if more plastic trash bags had been added since he’d cut through here yesterday. Or was it the day before? Time was losing its traction in John Riley’s life. Why wouldn’t it? Night was often day in this city.

Being in the passageway, the bags probably weren’t part of the regular trash pickup, and the hotel would call now and then to have them taken away. Meanwhile, Riley could make good use of them.

He kicked with his right foot, chasing away two rats. Kicked at the bags again to make sure there weren’t more of the rodents there, out of sight. He didn’t kick so hard that the plastic would split, though, and release fluids or some foul odor that even he couldn’t abide. Carefully, to accommodate arthritic knees, he lowered his aching body and lay back on the mounds of black plastic. He wriggled around so he wasn’t in contact with anything hard, then uncapped his wine bottle and sighed. He was tired. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t dream. He wouldn’t hear the voices again until morning.

Riley took a deep draw on the bottle and felt the acidic liquid course down his throat. There’d been a time when he’d have sent this one back in a restaurant and ordered another vintage. In another life.

Some of the wine dribbled from his mouth and ran down his unshaven chin. Quickly he raised the bottle upright so he wouldn’t lose more of its precious contents, and lowered it to his side. He shrugged a shoulder to wipe his chin against it and looked down at the bottle, about to raise it for another sip.

That’s when he saw the hand.

At first he thought it might be a joke, someone hiding in among the trash bags. Or a fake hand. A mannequin’s, maybe. Something like that.

But he knew it was human, even though it didn’t look quite right.

Then he knew why it didn’t look right. It was dead.

The voices screamed.

37

There were floodlights set up in the street and at each end of the passageway, so it was like day, only the glare was surrounded by darkness. Moths fluttered in and out of the brightness in warm night air so humid they might have been swimming.

“Same as the others,” Fedderman said. He’d been closer and reached the scene ahead of Quinn and Pearl.

They were standing near the dead body that had been found beside the Antonian Hotel. Julius Nift, from the medical examiner’s office, was over by his black city car parked among the NYPD radio cars, peeling off his latex gloves. The CSU techs were still gathering evidence in the blocked-off passageway. Nift glanced over at Quinn, smiled, and nodded.

Quinn nodded back, thinking, Asshole.

He thought about going over and talking to Nift, but the arrogant little ME was already climbing into his car, pulling the door closed. Quinn figured it didn’t matter. As Fedderman had said, this one would be like the others. Cause of death: a small-caliber (which would later turn out to be a .25) bullet to the head. Nift might have a time-of-death estimate, but it would be only that—an estimate. Quinn could wait until tomorrow for the postmortem report.

He almost spat a foul taste and odor from the edges of his tongue, then remembered this was a crime scene and swallowed instead. He was pretty sure most of the stench was coming from the black plastic trash bags, but the dead man was contributing.