Highest Praise for

John Lutz

“John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”

—Harlan Coben

“Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster

of a tale.”

—Jeffery Deaver

“John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”

—Ridley Pearson

“John Lutz is a major talent.”

—John Lescroart

“I’ve been a fan for years.”

—T. Jefferson Parker

“John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”

—Tony Hillerman

“Lutz ranks with such vintage masters

of big-city murder

as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Lutz is among the best.”

—San Diego Union

“Lutz knows how to seize and hold the

reader’s imagination.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar

and two Shamuses.”

—Publishers Weekly

Twist

“One of the top ten mystery novels of 2013.”

—The Strand Magazine

Pulse

“Grisly murders seen through the eyes of killer

and victim; crime scenes from which clues slowly

accumulate; a determined killer . . . compelling.”

—Booklist

“One of the ten best books of the year.”

—The Strand Magazine

Serial

“Wow, oh wow, oh wow . . . that’s as simple as I can put it.

You gotta read this one.”

—True Crime Book Reviews

Mister X

“A page-turner to the nail-biting end . . . twisty,

creepy whodunit.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Urge to Kill

“A solid and compelling winner . . . sharp

characterization, compelling dialogue and graphic

depictions of evil.... Lutz knows how to keep

the pages turning.”

—BookReporter.com

Night Kills

“Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In for the Kill

“Shamus and Edgar award–winner Lutz gives us

further proof of his enormous talent . . . an

enthralling page-turner.”

—Publishers Weekly

Chill of Night

“The ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz

is in rare form.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“A dazzling tour de force . . . compelling, absorbing.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Fear the Night

“A tense, fast-moving novel, a plot-driven page-turner of

the first order . . . a great read!”

—Book Page

Darker Than Night

“Readers will believe that they just stepped off a Tilt-A-

Whirl after reading this action-packed police

procedural.”

—The Midwest Book Review

Night Victims

“John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror. . . . He

propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”

—Sun-Sentinel

The Night Watcher

“Compelling . . . a gritty psychological

thriller.... Lutz draws the reader deep into the

killer’s troubled psyche.”

—Publishers Weekly

Final Seconds

“Lutz always delivers the goods, and this is

no exception.”

—Booklist

ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ

*Twist

*Pulse

*Switch (e-short)

*Serial

*Mister X

*Urge to Kill

*Night Kills

*In for the Kill

Chill of Night

Fear the Night

*Darker Than Night

Night Victims

The Night Watcher

The Night Caller

Final Seconds (with David August)

The Ex

Single White Female

* featuring Frank Quinn

Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and Pinnacle Books

Carnage

THE PREQUEL TO FRENZY

JOHN LUTZ

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Praise

Also by

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright Page

For Marilyn Davis

1

Florida, two years ago

An hour after killing the girl on her summer vacation, the killer took the coast road north.

To his right the morning sky was dark, with low gray clouds. He was sure that out at sea, rain must be falling. Straight ahead, what he calculated was true north, sunlight lanced through the clouds and lay golden on the winding road. As he drove he reran the murder over and over in his mind, finding new angles, fresh perspectives. It got better each time.

The girl—Taylor Reminger—had been easy prey, a naïve and pliable young woman, especially with a few doctored drinks in her. He’d been so nice to her—oh, he could be a charmer—that they were in her motel room before sundown. His every move was practiced and economical. He’d perfected his routine over the past several years. Within the hour, he’d had her taped tightly and gagged.

That’s when the fun began.

When she’d regained consciousness, Taylor opened her eyes and met the real true him.

He’d been learning with each victim. She had experienced the blade and the flame, and had spent the rest of the night dying in pain, making desperate noises that barely escaped her taped lips and wadded pillow. Her pleas near the end were scarcely recognizable as human.

When, finally, she died, he looked into her eyes and knew he had gotten all of her.

He smiled as he drove. He would remember Taylor. She died well and would stand out in memory among the others. She was special.

Or maybe he was simply getting better.

Directly in front of the car, three pelicans in perfect V formation like aircraft arced across the sky. Surely some kind of omen.

The killer, who carved the letters D.O.A. in his victims’ foreheads, had come to be known simply as that: “D.O.A.” In his estimation, not enough people had heard of him. So far, he and his relatively few murders (he’d started this latest spate of killings in Miami) were simply local news. This northward jaunt, leaving a bloody string of murders like a comet’s tail, would alert everyone along the eastern seacoast to the danger and terror. New York media would soon come to understand the pattern and path of the murders. No media could cover series killings better than the New York news. They would pursue every tidbit of information as if they were starving wolves, and give it an importance that made legend. The strength of the pack.

The killer tightened his grip on the steering wheel and thought about New York City. All that movement. All those voices. All those people. Jostling each other. Breathing each other’s breath. Terror was contagious and traveled fast among them. Especially the young single women, trying to make New York their own personal big apple.

What a wonderful town.

He’d get there eventually. There was no rush. Let them contemplate his approach.

The road curved, and a brightening reflection lay like a squirming chimera on the gleaming black hood of the rented Chevy. It had been easy enough to use phony documentation to rent the car for a month. Somewhere farther north, he would make sure it was clean of fingerprints or any other identifying factors—perhaps burn the vehicle—then find some other mode of transportation

His plan was simple and as inescapable as fate.

He would kill along the way. All the way to New York City and beyond. “Beyond” was important to the killer, but New York was special to him because of the famous Frank Quinn.

Quinn, or one of his minions, would soon understand the killer’s intent. But understanding it was a long way from being able to stop it.

The morning was heating up, and the killer had the Chevy’s air conditioner on high. He also had the front windows lowered about six inches so he could hear the surf. There hadn’t been much surf on the other coast, the Gulf coast. The waters there were much calmer. That was a shame, because there were indistinct but undeniable messages in the surf. Voices that knew secrets, and shared them.

As well as receiving information indirectly in surprising ways, D.O.A. watched the local and national TV news. And he read the newspapers. Not religiously, but he read them.

That was how he’d learned about Quinn. And how he’d learned even more, in the papers’ morgues of back editions.

Quinn was a former NYPD homicide detective who was justice personified. Or injustice. Depending on where you sat on the scales, and how much weight the justice or injustice upon you moved the needle. Quinn moved the justice scales a great deal. He was a big man, walking with a slight limp from being shot in the leg. One of those rugged types who seemed to get more rugged in middle age, and even when they were well beyond fifty. Which Quinn was. Not a handsome man, and with strong-boned features that were almost thuggish, he nevertheless had a reassuring effect on women. He looked like a guy who could take a punch and come back. Who would, if he was on your side, be there for you no matter what. At some point it usually came as a surprise to those who knew him that he had about him a roughhewn sophistication. Music, Cuban cigars, and Broadway productions were among his obsessions.

Quinn, retired from the NYPD, had opened his own investigative agency: Quinn and Associates Investigations. Or simply Q&A.

His specialty was serial murders.

So was D.O.A.’s.

2

New York, the present

Frank Quinn sat at his desk in the office of Q&A on West 79th Street. The arrangement of desks and chairs was parallel, much as in a squad room, a reflection of Quinn’s years as an NYPD homicide detective. The other detectives, also lately of the NYPD, felt right at home in such a setting. They were Quinn’s former partner in the department, Larry Fedderman, Quinn’s live-in lover, Pearl Kasner, and detectives Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin. All were former NYPD detectives. Q&A’s brilliant computer nerd, Jerry Lido, had drunk his way out of the department years ago. Only Pearl’s daughter, Jodi, an attorney and sometimes Q&A employee, had no experience as a cop. She seemed not to see that as a disadvantage.

The old West Side building was cooled with two large air-conditioning units set in oversized barred windows. One of the units was running too hard and making a vibrant hum.

The street door made its distinctive swishing sound, and a very tall, muscular redheaded woman in jogging clothes came in. She wore no makeup to disguise her freckles, and her thick, short hair looked as if it had been trimmed with a hacksaw. This was Helen Iman, a profiler with the NYPD. She exuded a scent of sweat and soap, like an athlete fresh from the shower. Helen was the only profiler Quinn had faith in. Not because she seemed to have a special talent the others didn’t possess, but because of her record. Quinn couldn’t deny the success of some of her insights and reasoning.

In her left hand was a sheaf of envelopes and advertisements. She was wearing shorts, and the long muscles in her thighs and calves flexed as she walked across the room and dropped what she was carrying onto Quinn’s desk.

“Your mail,” she said. “I caught the postal carrier just as she was about to stuff it into your box. Told her I’d bring it in.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Harold Mishkin asked. He sounded serious. Maybe he was. With Harold, sometimes it was hard to know.

“Technically,” his partner Sal growled in his gravel-pan voice.

“You want me to go back to the lobby and jam all this into the box?” Helen asked.

Quinn ended the discussion by reaching out and dragging the mail across the desk to him, noting that his detectives were getting testy. Probably because of the heat wave that was torturing New York. He liked it when they were irritable. That was when they did their best work.

Quinn saw, in with the envelopes and fliers, something small and rectangular and wrapped in brown paper and tape. It was addressed to him personally in neat, black printed letters that would leave a handwriting analyst nothing but guesswork.

“I was wondering about that, too,” Helen said.

Quinn held the package up between thumb and forefinger. “Was this delivered with the rest of the mail?”

“Yeah. Renz got one just like it an hour ago.”

“That why he sent you here?”

“Yeah. He might want me in on this one.”

That piqued Quinn’s curiosity. Police Commissioner Harley Renz, Quinn’s longtime friend and enemy, sometimes hired Q&A to work in conjunction with the NYPD—with Quinn in charge of the case.

Helen the profiler was often part of the work for hire arrangement. Sometimes she was as good as a seer. Sometimes she was a seer.

Renz was more politician than cop, and always had in mind whatever higher office he might reach. In a few years, mayor might be a possibility. If Renz could find enough dirt to smear on whoever would dare to be his opponent.

It wasn’t impossible that Renz would be elected. He was probably the most popular police commissioner the city had ever known—because the voters didn’t really know him.

But did the voters really know anyone?

Renz was brilliant at accruing credit for other people’s achievements, and pinning blame on others for his mistakes.

Helen the profiler nodded toward the tightly wrapped package and said, “My guess is it contains the same thing that was in the commissioner’s package.”

Quinn didn’t like the tone of her voice. “Is it going to blow up or in other ways cause my fingers to fall off?”

Helen shrugged. “Might.”

The package was so thoroughly wrapped that there was more tape visible than paper. Quinn got a sharp letter opener from a desk drawer and broke into it neatly.

He found a small rectangular cardboard box. It was the kind of thing a bracelet might come in. He glanced at Helen, then carefully lifted the box’s lid.

Whatever was inside was wrapped in a cut-out square of folded newspaper. It was part of a three-days-old Miami Herald, featuring an editorial about the Federal deficit. It was too large.

Quinn slowly unfolded the paper, and stared at the object revealed. He tilted the paper so it dropped almost noiselessly onto the desktop.

“A plastic chess piece,” he said. “The queen.”

“Just like Renz’s.” Helen said.

“The most mobile and dangerous piece on the chess board,” Harold noted.

Sal stared at him. “I didn’t know you played chess,” Sal said.

“I watch it on TV,” Harold said.

“Well,” Helen said, “they televise soccer.”

There was another, smaller square of newspaper in the box, this one neatly creased. Quinn carefully unfolded it and smoothed it out.

It was part of the front page of the Spindrift Bugle, a weekly giveaway.

Spindrift was one of many small beach resort towns along the coast highway. It boasted the usual resort amenities: souvenir shops, a public beach with showers, a food hutch, a place that rented bicycles and scuba equipment, a booth that sold parasol rides . . .

It was the kind of place where fun should happen. Not murder.

3

The killer sat back in the rental Chevy and watched the little ocean-side town north of Nickleton glide past. The usual beach houses, motels, and too-cute restaurants. The franchises dotting the beach road on the landward side. More expensive eateries and shops on the beach side. The sun worshipers on their multicolored beach towels dotted the sandy slope to the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were lapping quietly at the shore this calm day.

Slowing near a boat-rental and souvenir shop, the killer parked the Chevy in the shade of some cypress trees at roadside. He climbed out and stood by the hood and barely audible ticking engine, watching the surf foam on the sand. Lined up on grassless, hardened ground in the shade were some wooden picnic benches. No one was sitting on any of them.

He reached back into the car and got his Acer laptop, carried it to one of the benches, and sat down not far from a tattered white towel someone had forgotten or discarded. It was stained with what looked like lipstick.

The killer thought briefly again about Spindrift and Taylor Reminger. Remembering. Smiling his secret smile. It was a fine world if you were a taker. Not so fine for Taylor and the others. Givers.

He opened the laptop and adjusted its position so the sun wasn’t shining directly on the screen.

He wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t get online. That was okay. When he left here, he’d check into a motel that featured online service. Then he’d take another look, do another quick read-through on a young woman named Patricia Maria Angelina (called simply Pat by her zany Facebook friends).

One of those friends was the killer.

He wasn’t one of the crowd Pat ran with in the real or virtual world, but he’d learned a lot about her via Facebook. That she was nineteen, five foot four, a natural blonde (he’d see about that), and liked heavy metal music. She was planning to enroll in college at Northwestern University in Chicago as soon as she had enough money saved. Unable to get along with her mother and father, she’d moved out and was living with her roommate, Jessica, in a small apartment near the beach. The killer had seen the address in the background in one of her Facebook photos, a shot of her standing next to a small shaggy dog. The dog must belong to someone else. The killer knew Patricia didn’t own a dog, but had a battle-scarred black-and-gray tomcat named Snuffy, which she loved very much. She was the type who could love almost anything or anyone without reservation. A trusting soul with a luminous smile.

He liked her on Facebook.

Without reservation.

4

New York

Quinn smoothed out the newspaper page from the package the mail had brought. It was wrinkled but readable.

According to the Spindrift Bugle, the murder of young Taylor Reminger was a once-in-a century event. Spindrift was one of many resort towns in Florida, places where spring breakers occasionally lost their lives in one way or another. Booze, drugs, sex, youth, and an ocean were a lethal combination. But even those kinds of deaths hadn’t occurred in the town in over twenty years.

Taylor was Taylor “Tey” Hope Reminger, from Long Island, a student who’d expected to start college in New Orleans later in the year. Her photo was one of a reasonably attractive girl making the most of her looks in what appeared to be a high school graduation photo. Quinn noted that she was twenty-two, so she’d put off college for a while.

The thing about her that interested Quinn was the manner of her death. She’d apparently been tortured with shallow, skillful cuts by a sharp blade, where it would hurt the most. Not only hurt, but humiliate. Nipples had been removed, along with an earlobe, found lying alongside Tey’s head with a cheap souvenir shell earring still attached. Her clitoris had been cut off. Then there were what seemed to be cigarette burns in strategic spots meant to be most agonizing.

The ME’s opinion was that most of the injuries had been inflicted ante mortem. While she was still alive. Even the cuts on her forehead, where the letters D.O.A. had been carved. Some of that blood had been wiped away after her heart had stopped pumping and her breathing ceased, so the letters were more legible. Those who looked closely noticed that her hands were misshapen.

Quinn gave the small-town newspaper page out to the others to read. Everyone was quiet as the news item was passed around.

“Looks like he was trying to get information out of her,” Fedderman said, when the page had made the rounds and been returned to Quinn. “Or he’s just a sadistic bastard.”

“She displayed some bravery,” Helen said. “Her torturer didn’t get whatever it was he wanted, even after he broke her fingers one after the other. D.O.A. is thorough.”

“The same might be said of his copycat,” Quinn said.

Helen didn’t seem surprised by the notion. It had passed through everyone’s mind. Killers like D.O.A. often inspired copycat murderers. To some of the twisted, he was a hero.

Quinn knew that was what worried Renz. That and a sixth sense that hinted at what was about to happen in his city. New York was everybody’s big league, even when the sport was murder.

It took a major leaguer to play this game. Quinn.

“Renz figured you had experience with this kind of killer,” Helen said.

“Renz wants to stay as far away from it as he can,” Pearl said. “If this guy keeps killing and brings his act to this city, copycat killer or not, the media will have a feeding frenzy.”

“Let’s say the commissioner prefers to lead from behind on this one,” Helen said.

Harold said, “That way you don’t get shot in the back.”

“We’ve been in this position before,” Quinn said. “Renz has read it right. The killer and I are playing some kind of game, and he’s ahead.”

“Or he’s dead,” Fedderman said. “Went someplace where he wouldn’t be found and blew his brains out. Guilt can do that to people.”

“Not likely,” Sal said. “But possible.”

“Even dead serial killers inspire followers,” Pearl said.

“Especially dead ones,” Helen said. “Though I agree with Feds. It’s been awhile. It might very well be that D.O.A. is dead.”

“If he is, we can only hope the bastard suffered,” Jodi said.

She’s very much like Pearl, Quinn thought.

She’s very much like Quinn, Pearl thought.

“Copycat killer or the real thing,” Helen said, “it’s not going to make much difference to the public, or to the media wolves. You and a killer are in the same game.”

Quinn wished they’d stop calling it a game.

But he knew they were right. And what it would mean to lose.

5

Patricia Angelina, D.O.A. thought, looked a lot like Tey Reminger. The only real difference was that Pat was now a redhead and Tey a blonde. But in a certain light Pat could have passed for a blonde.

Which was why he’d selected her. That, and she had simply struck him as the right victim. There was about some women a secret yearning for what Pat was going to receive. His gift to her. He could read that in a woman, and was seldom wrong.

He had first seen her in a souvenir shop across the street from the public beach. She was wearing a white terrycloth sun shawl, open at the front so that it provided glimpses of cleavage and a tan, taut body. Her rubber sandals made a flopping sound on the shop’s plank floor as she moved toward a display of conch shells that had been made into phones. She was aware of the killer watching her; he was sure of that. He casually moved to the opposite side of the conch-phone display.

She made it a point not to look at him, but pretended keen interest in the phones.

“Cute,” he said.

“I wonder what the previous occupant would have thought,” she said, holding up a gray-and-brown-colored shell phone.

“I wasn’t talking about the phones,” he said.

She met his direct approach with a smile, and he knew he was in.

“Are you serious about these phones?” he asked.

“Sure. Someone might call while I’m surfing.”

He feigned interest. “You surf?”

“No.”

“You jest.”

“Yes. Anyway, it’s illegal to surf and text.” She gave him a sideways glance, showing him she was amused by him, by herself. She was enjoying this.

“Illegal bother you?” he asked.

“When sharks are around.” She smiled. “You thinking of stealing a conch phone?”

“No. I’m a dolphin.”

“I kissed a dolphin once.”

“What happened?”

“It kissed me back.”

“Smart fish. I thought I might buy you one.”

“A dolphin?”

“A conch phone.”

“Why?”

“So you’d feel obligated to have lunch with me.”

The smile stayed, and something happened in her eyes. Something decisive. “Pretty expensive lunch,” she said.

“You’re well worth it.”

“My husband thinks so,” she said. Toying with him. He knew she was unmarried. Knew in fact that she’d recently broken off a relationship with a dorky-looking guy named Art who fancied himself a sculptor. Facebook research again. They laid their hearts out there, and then were surprised that you knew so much about them. Intimate details.

“I’ll talk to your husband,” he said. “He’ll understand.”

She gave him a long and appraising look. “You know I’m not married.”

No dummy, Pat.

“Yep. I’ve been watching you. And I don’t see a ring.”

“I think I recall you from Facebook.”

“That’s why you look familiar!” He looked ashamed. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know much about you.”

“What if I did have a husband?”

He shrugged. “I would never poach.”

Her gaze held him for a few seconds. “You mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“A man with scruples.”

He grinned. “More like one who doesn’t want to get shot.”

She was still weighing her options, contemplating what might be a fateful first step.

“We’ll skip the phone,” she said, laying the conch phone she was holding back where it had sat on display. She smiled. “I’ll take the lunch.”

They left the souvenir shop and set off down the beach toward a restaurant called Knobby’s that had outside dining. As they walked, her sandals flung rooster tails of sand.

“I’m Corey Sanders,” he said, as if taking a cue.

“Your Web name?”

He laughed. “Real name.” In a way.

“Patricia Angelina,” she said.

“Beautiful name. Like poetry.”

“Just plain Pat.”

“Just plain beautiful. You know what else I like about you?”

“Couldn’t guess,” she said, tossing her hair and grinning. Her teeth were perfect and gleamed unnaturally, as if she’d recently treated them with whitener.

“You’re not the sort woman who demands that she pay for lunch.”

She threw her head back and laughed from deep in her throat. “Women like that,” she said, “they always expect something in return.”

“Sometimes,” the killer said, “they get it.”

6

The motel room’s sheer curtains waltzed gracefully with the night sea breeze. It wasn’t completely dark outside, but the sun had been down long enough that the horizon was black against a darkening sky.

Corey, he’d said his name was. But it always took him a few seconds to react to it. Pat doubted now that it was his real name.

And she wasn’t really sure she’d met him on Facebook. It might have been Twitter. Or maybe one of the other social or business sites online. However they’d first made contact, he must have hacked into her computer and found out loads of information about her, because when they’d met, it seemed that within minutes they were old friends. Or at least acquaintances.

It didn’t bother her much, his romping around the contents of her hard drive. Most guys could do that now, and Pat had been guilty of it a few times herself. She didn’t have anything to hide. At least not anything she had put online, so what was the difference? It was all part of the hooking-up game, and at least it was a part you could manage.

Pat knew it was supposed to be dangerous, meeting real people from the virtual world, but this seemed different. And certainly not dangerous. Corey seemed to be one of the kindest, gentlest men she’d met on- or offline. His smile was brightened with a touch of eagerness, almost as if he were a puppy (or a dolphin) badly in need of affection.

They’d had a few drinks at a beachside bar. A few more. Then he’d suggested watching the sunset and going to dinner at the Sea Sail restaurant. It was an upper-class restaurant, which meant Pat would have to change from her beach robe and floppies. He’d waited for her to suggest that they drop by her motel so she could get into something suitable. It was only right down the beach, near where the tall masts of some sailboats bobbed.

She hadn’t found it suspicious that he was already in dress slacks and an unstructured sport coat, leather deck shoes. No tie. But who wore a tie in Nickleton? And he was carrying a large beach bag, as if he could change into swimming trunks in no time and fling himself into the surf. She could imagine him running loosely and gracefully toward the water, crashing into a wave that crashed into him. Showing the sea who was boss. It was a nice image.

No one paid any attention to them as they passed the windows of the motel lobby, then went down a slanted brick walkway to the lineup of identical blue doors. The smell of chlorine was evident. There was a pool nearby.

Pat worked the key and they entered. Unsurprisingly, the entire back wall of the room was window, framed at both ends by floor-length green drapes and sheer curtains.

When Pat switched on the overhead light, Corey went to the window and closed both the drapes and curtains. The air was still and the sea was only a whisper now.

Pat smiled at him, her heart fluttering. He wasn’t handsome in the conventional sense; it was more that there was nothing wrong with him. All the pieces fit. It gave him a kind of odd anonymity.

“You interested in privacy?” she asked.

“It’s one of my favorite things,” he said.

“That why you call yourself Corey?”

He smiled. “You guessed.”

“It’s okay if you want to remain anonymous for a while.” She gave him a serious look. “Long as you aren’t married.”

He widened his eyes in mock horror. “That’s something you don’t have to worry about.”

She smiled in a way that told him she believed him.

“I’ll throw something on and we’ll go to dinner,” she said. She wasn’t some slut who jumped in and out of bed without first at least breaking bread with a man and getting to know him.

On the other hand . . .

She was easy to bring down. When he drew her closer, she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead he waited until she was breathing out, then drove his fist deep into her stomach. Her breath whooshed out of her. She couldn’t inhale. Couldn’t stand up straight. Her eyes bulged as she tried desperately to draw in oxygen.

He gripped her under both arms and kept her from curling up on the floor, the way they always tried to do. Instead he heaved her onto the bed and in no time had her wrists taped behind her back. When he was sure she was breathing almost well enough to scream, he taped her mouth. Screams turned to moans, not even as loud as the sea.

He drew from his beach bag a large folding knife and expertly—even artfully—cut her clothes so they slipped easily from her body. When her legs were bare, he taped them together as he had her wrists. She was lying on her back, her hands behind her. She couldn’t move or turn over with her knees pressed together. He could read her thoughts: “At least he’s not going to rape me.”

She couldn’t guess that he wanted—would take—more than that.

He laid the knife next to her on the bed. Then he drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and took one out. He worked one of those cheap plastic lighters and touched flame to tobacco. Blew smoke off to the side and smiled. It was not at all his usual shy smile.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m a nonsmoker.”

It was past noon the next day, and he was long gone from Nickleton, when Patricia Angelina’s tortured body was found.

A motel maid discovered her dead in her room, taped and still on her blood-soaked mattress. The maid wasn’t the screaming type, but she did vomit when she saw the letters D.O.A. carved on the dead girl’s forehead. She had read about that killer sicko, and another wave of nausea hit her before she got out of there and told Ernie up in the office it was time to call the police. One look at her eyes and pasty complexion and he knew it was past time.

The killer heard the news on the car radio, driving north. The mellow male radio voice said that police were still searching for clues. The killer knew they wouldn’t find anything worthwhile. He’d been careful with fingerprints, DNA, that sort of thing. He watched plenty of cop TV and knew what was necessary to break away clean from a crime scene.

When the road curved inland, and he came to a small area of beach where signs said SCENIC LOOKOUT, he pulled the car over and parked at an angle at a curb, near some picnic benches.

There was a nice view of the beach from there, with sailboats in the distance, but the killer concluded that it was nothing special. Which explained why he was the only one at the scenic outlook.

He removed from his pocket the cheap drugstore disposable phone he’d bought, punched in Quinn’s cell phone number, and idly walked toward the gentle surf.

When Quinn identified himself, the killer simply said Patricia Angelina’s name, and then broke the connection.

Quinn would know who’d called. The killer was sure of that.

He walked closer to the sea and threw the phone underarm into the water. It skipped on the sea like a stone, and then sank.

He remembered what Pat had said about surfing and texting and smiled.

Some dolphin.

7

A few of the New York media carried the Nickleton story. One local daily news program, Minnie Miner ASAP, mentioned the fact that what had become a string of ocean-side murders was moving along the coast toward New York. Quinn, and Renz, knew it might not be long before the nasty news genie was out of the bottle.

“Something in the mail for you,” Pearl said.

They were in the living room of the brownstone, and she’d just brought up what looked like the usual assortment of mail from the box downstairs.

Quinn held out his hand and she placed in it a small package wrapped in brown paper and tape.

“Looks familiar,” Pearl said. “Except for the North Carolina postmark. Same mechanical looking untraceable printing.”

“Where’s Jodi?”

“Outside. She’s a big enough girl she can be in on this,” Pearl said about her daughter, the attorney.

“If she happens to walk in on it,” Quinn said.

Pearl didn’t reply, knowing it wasn’t the time to get into an argument about what Jodi should or shouldn’t know. She watched Quinn sit on the sofa and, leaning forward, use a penknife he carried and carefully open the package.

Inside were a wadded sheet of Nickleton newspaper and a plastic chess pawn.

8

They were in the Q&A offices, the part that resembled a squad room, and that prospective clients first saw when they came in through the street door. It was a little past nine in the morning. Fedderman and Quinn were the only ones there.

A leather sole scuffed on concrete outside and the street door swished open.

“He’s working his way up the East Coast,” Jerry Lido said when he’d made his way all the way into the office. He’d bumped the door frame as he entered.

Quinn figured Lido was hungover. Not drunk. Lido worked best when he was soused, but he never came into the office that way.

Hardly ever.

His shirt was sloppily tucked in and he needed a shave. Since he’d obviously been drinking last night, Quinn listened closely to what he had to say.

Lido plopped himself down and booted up his computer. “Another murder farther north on the southeast coast,” he said.

“A killer with a compass,” Fedderman said.

Lido ignored him, as if maybe he figured Fedderman was an hallucination. “He started his latest killing binge in Miami, then maybe one in Pompano Beach, then Spindrift, and now Nickleton.” He brought a map up on his computer monitor. “He’s traveling up the coast, stopping and killing approximately the same distance between murders.”

Quinn paid closer attention, and walked over to look past Lido’s shoulder at the map.

“The murders were committed here, here, here, and here,” Lido said, pointing with a tremulous forefinger.

“That doesn’t look like the same distance between them,” Quinn said.

“I’m not referring to driving distance,” Lido said, “though he’s almost certainly driving. Sometimes the road curves along with the coast.”

“You’re saying as the crow flies,” Fedderman said.

Lido grinned. “More like the flamingo. And while the distances aren’t exactly the same, they increase proportionally.”

“So he’s traveling north, right now,” Quinn said. “Driving farther between each murder.”

Lido shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. He’s in a pattern, like so many serial killers, but we can’t be sure he realizes that. Or that he follows it every time.”

“He’s a beach killer,” Fedderman said. “That’s another pattern. He kills on or near a beach.”

Lido shrugged. “The Miami murder was several blocks away from the beach.”

“So what do you think it means?” Quinn asked Lido. “This crow’s—or flamingo’s—flight distance instead of car odometer distance?”

“Means he’s using a map,” Lido said. “Like we are.”

Fedderman walked over and the three of them stood at the computer as Lido pointed to Nickleton, and then traced his nicotine yellowed finger over the map to the projected site of the next murder.

It was the small beachside town of Del Moray.

None of them had ever heard of it.

Pearl, Sal, and Harold arrived, and Quinn explained the situation to them.

“There might be something to it,” Sal said, rubbing his chin. “Or it could be coincidence.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Harold said. “Not if you’re a mystic or a cop.”

Quinn wondered what Harold meant by that. Maybe only Harold knew.

Pearl said, “If the killer is on his way, or planning on going to Del Moray, he’ll be looking for his next victim.”

Quinn knew where she was trying to take the conversation and didn’t like it. “Don’t get any ideas about being bait,” he said. “Besides, you’re not his type.”

But he knew she could be bait, easily. Her features were those of a much younger woman, and her lithe, buxom body only strengthened the illusion. Quinn decided to leave the age issue alone.

“You can’t stop a woman from dying her hair,” Pearl said.

“All the killer’s victims have been on the social networks online,” Lido said.

“I can join them,” Pearl said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Quinn told her.

“But we’re going to do it,” Pearl said.

“What makes you think so?”

Pearl smiled. “Because it might work.”

9

Del Moray wasn’t much to look at. Its police department and a strip shopping center faced the public beach across the street. The beach widened in both directions, but some of the clapboard houses and small businesses backed up to it. It was still technically mostly public beach, but few people strayed north to directly across from police headquarters, or south to the line of motels, all low two stories so the view of the Atlantic wouldn’t be spoiled.

It wasn’t a large stretch of beach, and Pearl was a beauty as a blonde. She would definitely be noticed. Propped on the bridge of her nose were knockoff Prada sunglasses, thick-framed and dark enough that you couldn’t tell for sure where she was looking. In her white-and-blue terrycloth beach bag was her ID, a pullover shirt, a pair of rubber flip-flops, and her Glock handgun rolled in a towel. She wore a two-piece blue bathing suit that Quinn didn’t approve of but that kept catching his eye.

Quinn thought maybe they had overdone it. The way most of the males on the beach were looking at Pearl, it would be difficult to choose a prospective killer.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened the first day, or the second, except that Pearl got a nice tan.

Sal was pretending to sunbathe and listen to music on an earbud, not too close to where Pearl lounged, but close enough to get to her if somebody tried to abduct her. The most likely thing to happen would be for the killer to strike up a conversation. That had happened a couple of times. One of the men turned out to be a Del Moray cop. The other was interrupted by his wife and departed chastised.

Pearl seemed to be enjoying herself.

It was six o’clock, and she’d left the beach and was changing clothes in her room, when it happened. The key grated in the lock, and a man entered. He was wearing dark pleated slacks and a white shirt and looked like one of the employees who were around the motel doing odd jobs.

Except he was holding a gun.

As soon as Pearl looked into his eyes, she knew who he was. Not only that. It was also obvious that he knew who she was. Her legs went rubbery. Fedderman or Sal, or whoever’s shift it was, should have seen the man enter her room.

But she knew her motel-room door couldn’t be watched all the time.

“No one saw me come in,” her visitor said, reading her mind. “I entered this morning with the maid and stayed.” He used a foot to lift the skirt on the bed and revealed the maid’s dead arm and hand.

“Now what?” Pearl asked, in a wavering voice not quite her own, wondering if she could reach her beach bag and Glock before the killer could react.

She decided it was too risky.

“Listen,” she said, thinking she might brave it out. “I’m—”

He stepped closer and punched her in the stomach. So fast. No one would have had time to react, to stop the punch.

Struggling to breathe, Pearl dropped to her knees. He produced a large role of duct tape, but he didn’t tape her in his usual fashion. While she was still paralyzed and breathless from the punch, he taped her arms to her sides, her hands to the outside tops of her thighs. Then he taped her ankles and knees.

She was breathing through her nose with effort now, wondering if she’d be able to scream. He smiled at her, knowing what she was thinking, and a wide rectangle of tape was slapped over her lips. More tape over her mouth, then wound around the back of her neck and head. No scream was going to erupt from her. It was all she could do to keep calm and breathe.

He rolled her under the bed then, as if she were a log, and she found herself lying shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, with the dead maid. She saw the glint of the maid’s bulging eye and knew the woman had been strangled, which was why there was no blood. Except for their two bodies, it was tidy under the bed.

Pearl knew that audacious as it was, this had all been planned, and it was working. That scared the hell out of her.

A few minutes later, she thought she heard the door to her room open and close, but couldn’t be sure.

“Where the hell is Pearl?” Quinn asked, standing outside the motel’s cocktail lounge. They had a clear view of the beach. It was late in the day but sunbathers still lounged, children still splashed, bodybuilders still strutted, lovers still used the cover of the incoming waves to grope each other. A larger than usual swell assaulted the beach and destroyed a sand castle.

Sal shrugged. “She left the beach more than half an hour ago. I looked in her room. She’s not there, and that big cloth bag she carries like a purse is gone.”

“Maybe she drove out to get something to eat,” Fedderman suggested. He’d been assigned to watch Pearl after Sal, and suspected she had deliberately given him the slip. She was like that, tended to go off on her own. The only one who might buck Quinn.

“She would have alerted us to that,” Quinn said. He glanced at his watch. “She’s been gone at least half an hour with no contact. It doesn’t make sense.”

“She’s not on the beach,” Sal said. “She’s supposed to tell us before she goes there.” Sal looked thoughtful. “Besides, her swimming suit is there in her room. Hanging over the shower rod in the bathroom and drying out.”

No one said anything for a long time. Fedderman had been the last one to see Pearl enter her room.

“Jesus!” Quinn finally said. “If—”

He was interrupted by the rasping of his cell phone. He wrested it from his pocket and looked at it, prepared to say Pearl’s name. But it wasn’t Pearl on the phone.

It was the Del Moray Police department.

“This is—”

“I know who you are,” Quinn said. “Is—”

“And I know who you are. At least I was told. Detective Frank Quinn from New York?”

“Yes. Listen—”

“I’m chief of police Alfonso Desoto, and my office was given this number to call by an anonymous source. A nutcase, we figured, until we went where the caller directed us.”

“Oh, Jesus!” Quinn said again, under his breath. “Where are you, Chief?”

“Number 7 Jacaranda, off of Main,” Desoto said. “It’s a green frame house with a lot of flowers out front. A trellis of roses near the driveway. About a block off the beach.”

“I’m on my way,” Quinn said.

“We’ll be waiting out back. You won’t have any trouble finding us. It’s the house with the woman’s body in the pool.”

The house on Jacaranda was just as Desoto had described, only he hadn’t mentioned the bees buzzing around the flowers out front. Fedderman made a wide detour to get to the backyard. Quinn took a straight line and was somehow unnoticed by the bees.

A uniformed Del Moray cop stood by a swimming pool with his arms crossed. An almost ridiculously handsome Latin man in a lightweight tailored suit stood near him, watching the two detectives approach. He had on a white shirt and blue tie, amazingly dry and unwrinkled by the heat. His shoes were two tones of tan with a high gloss.

Quinn nodded to the uniform, then to the clotheshorse.

“Quinn?” asked the clotheshorse.

Quinn introduced himself and Fedderman. The clotheshorse said he was Chief Desoto, and that the uniform’s name was Beckle.

Quinn wasn’t looking at either one of them. About five feet from where Beckle stood was what appeared to be Pearl’s beach bag. Beyond it, in the pool, floated a nude blond woman. She was facedown, and unmoving except with the slight play of water in the breeze.

As he swallowed his heart and moved toward the pool, Quinn saw that the beach bag was open. Pearl’s ID and Glock were visible.

Desoto clutched Quinn’s upper arm with surprising strength.

But it was something else that slowed Quinn. Something about the dead woman.

Beckle used a long hook pole to move the body closer to the edge of the pool. Quinn saw the expected cigarette burns and knife cuts. Then Beckle bent down and turned the dead woman’s head so Quinn could see her face.

The first thing he noticed was D.O.A. carved in her forehead.

The second thing was that she wasn’t Pearl.

Quinn let out a long breath. He realized he was sweating so that his clothes were soaked.

“You okay?” Desoto asked. “You know this Pearl?”

“It isn’t Pearl,” Quinn said. Not a religious man, he still felt like crossing himself. God must get a lot of that, he thought. Pleas for mercy . . . gushing gratitude. Or crushing depression.

Desoto looked at the beach bag, looked at Quinn. “We didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure.”

“You can be sure now.”

“Then the unlucky one in the pool is the woman who goes with this address,” he said. “Audrey Simmons. Twenty-seven, single, lives—lived—alone.”

“Everything fits the victim profile,” Quinn said, glancing back at the pool.

Desoto nodded. “We know about the D.O.A. killer. Didn’t think he’d visit Del Moray, though. You’ve been tracking the bastard, and probably know more about him than we do.” He moved an arm of the well-cut suit to take in the pool with its floating corpse. A silver cuff link winked in the sun. “What you see is what we got. That and a few more nuggets of info on the victim.”

“I want it,” Quinn said. “Even if we already have it.”

Desoto cocked his head toward where a metal table with four webbed chairs sat beneath an oversized umbrella. The umbrella had fringe that the breeze occasionally ruffled.

“You’ve probably got more to tell me than I’ve got to tell you,” Desoto said. “Let’s sit there in the shade and have a talk.”

10

Desoto took it all in, and then informed Quinn that Audrey Simmons was divorced and a third-grade schoolteacher. She was a runner and took part in local marathons to raise money for charity. There was no obvious love interest in her life, but Desoto would learn more talking to friends and relatives of the victim.

“And of course,” he said, “we’ll keep each other informed about your detective, Pearl.”

“More than just a detective,” Quinn said.

“Ah. I thought so. From watching you at the pool.”

Desoto smiled with perfect white teeth. His thick black hair was undisturbed by the breeze, nailed down with some kind of greasy pomade, but on him it looked good. The guy really did resemble an old time matinee idol. He promised to keep Quinn informed of anything that might develop with the local investigation. That didn’t mean much to Quinn, who already knew who the killer was, and that he was staying on the move.

Where the hell is Pearl? He didn’t want to think she was with the killer. Or worse . . .

That isn’t how the bastard works. Isn’t part of his sick pattern.

But Quinn knew he was lying to himself. No one was completely predictable.

When Quinn returned to where the car was parked, his cell phone buzzed.

Sal growled, “Quinn?” in Quinn’s ear.

“Yeah.”

“The guy from the motel office said he got an anonymous phone call saying we should search Pearl’s room again.”

“Again means he was probably watching us the first time.”

“Creepy bastard might be watching now, or listening to our phone conversation. Anyway, we’re going back in and searching.”

“Not till I get there. I’m sitting in my car now.”

“You got any idea of why the killer wants Pearl’s room tossed again?”

“Not really,” Quinn said.

“We can handle it right now, in case it might be time urgent.”

“I want the Del Moray police in on this, assuming they’ve got a bomb squad.”

“Christ, a bomb! I never thought of that.”

“The killer might have.”

“A bomb . . . Well, I can see why you wouldn’t want to miss that.”

Quinn wondered for a moment if Sal was trying to be funny. He decided to let it pass. Probably Sal had been spending too much time with Harold.

“I’m on my way,” Quinn said.

He was thumbing out the Del Moray Police number on his cell as he pulled the big Lincoln away from the curb.

Quinn parked as close as possible to Pearl’s motel room. He saw Sal, Harold, and Fedderman standing outside in the shade of a palm tree, about a hundred feet from her door. They had strung yellow tape to keep gawkers a safe distance away. People stared, but most went on their way, either to the beach or leaving it. The motel manager, a tall, slender young man with huge tortoiseshell glasses, was on a sandy path just beyond them, pacing.

“Bomb squad’s on the way here from Fort Lauderdale,” Fedderman said.

“Too far away,” Quinn said. His throat was dry but he felt like spitting.

When he looked up, he saw a Del Moray police car pulling into the parking lot. The light strip on its roof was flashing a riot of color. He headed for Pearl’s motel room.

“Where you going?” Sal rasped in surprise.

“To Pearl’s room, while I’m still in charge.”

The door was locked so he kicked it open.

Quinn knew he might not have much time. He stood in the center of the room and moved in a slow circle, then he checked the closet and bathroom, anyplace a bomb might be hidden.

The last place he decided to check was beneath the bed, where a blast would be limited by the heavy mattress and bedsprings.

He bent over, peered into the shadows beneath the bed, and immediately saw a woman’s arm.

Just as immediately, he knew the arm was dead.

Quinn stood up and heaved the mattress out of the way, off the box springs. Then he gripped the limp cool arm and pulled.

The woman wasn’t Pearl. She was Latin and matronly, and in a maid’s uniform. She had obviously been strangled, judging by her bulging eyes clouded with broken capillaries.

Quinn heard a low moan. Another. And shoved the mattress all the way off the bed frame.

There was Pearl, wrapped in gray duct tape. Her legs were fastened together, her arms and hands were taped to her hips. A rectangle of duct tape served as a gag. She and the maid must have been lying side by side, immovable and silent as the room was searched. At least Pearl was alive. Her eerily calm brown eyes stayed fixed on Quinn as he worked her out from beneath the bed. He could see and hear her breathing.

Seething with anger and at the same time relief, he gently picked her up and carried her outside.

The Del Moray police car he’d seen arrive was parked near the yellow tape. Nearby was another vehicle. An ambulance. Desoto at least was thinking.

Two white-uniformed paramedics ran toward Quinn, and he carefully handed over Pearl. In short order she was lying on a gurney, then was placed in the back of the ambulance.

Quinn rode with her to the hospital.

“We gave the room a quick look, never thought to check under the bed,” Sal said in the hospital waiting room. They’d stayed, even though the doctors said it looked like Pearl was unharmed.

Quinn could understand Sal’s position. Still, he didn’t like it.

“You’d been in and out of her room, and you didn’t look under the bed?”

Fedderman wore a pained expression. “Remember, when we were looking for Pearl, we still thought she was probably okay.”

“Nobody heard anything?”

“She couldn’t move or make a sound,” Sal said. “Neither could the maid.”

“The maid—”

“She was strangled. The manager assumed she was still making her rounds, or had already finished and left work for the day.”

Fedderman still couldn’t look Quinn in the eye. “But D.O.A. didn’t kill Pearl . . .”

“Playing his friggin’ games,” Sal rasped. “Wanted us to know he could have had his way with her.”

“He killed someone else besides the maid,” Quinn said. “A woman named Audrey Simmons. Lived in a house with a pool.”

“Asshole’s gotta have his water nearby,” Sal said.

“She was in the pool. He tortured her before he killed her and carved D.O.A. in her forehead.”

“Games,” Sal said again. “Even with chess pieces.”

“What I don’t like,” Quinn told him, “is that he seems to be a couple of moves ahead.”

By the time Quinn and Fedderman returned to the motel, the desk clerk had left for Quinn a small brown wrapped package. It had been placed in with the regular mail, with Quinn’s name and room number instead of an address.

Quinn immediately carried the package to the far end of the parking lot, then laid it gently on the ground. Then he phoned Desoto, told him about the package, and asked him to go ahead and send the bomb squad from Fort Lauderdale.

Less than an hour later Quinn stood with Desoto, his sidekick Beckle, and the Q&A detectives, and watched a robot that looked deceptively like a toy roll to where the brown package addressed to Quinn lay. It slowed and seemed to creep up on the package. Metal arms reached out, clutched the package, shook it. Raised it several times and dropped it.

Ten minutes later, two guys who looked more like astronauts than bomb disposal experts cautiously approached the package, which was now illuminated by bright lights from several angles to eliminate shadows. They regarded it carefully, then kneeled and bent over it. Soon the package was unwrapped, the box inside opened.

One of the astronauts waved for Quinn and Desoto to come over. Everyone else was held back, just in case. Bomb disposal experts regularly bet their lives on an abundance of caution, but made sure nobody else’s life was at stake.

In the glare of artificial light, they looked down at the package’s contents.

Two plastic chess pawns.

11

Back in New York, Quinn and his detectives gathered at the office, along with Helen the profiler and Jerry Lido. Some stood; others sat in client chairs, mostly clumped around Quinn’s desk. Pearl was slouched in one of Quinn’s chairs. Helen was perched on the edge of Pearl’s desk, her long arms crossed and rippling with muscle and sinew. There was a clammy feel to the air, and the scent of fresh-brewed coffee.

Quinn leaned back in his swivel chair and listened to the brainstorming. He liked this kind of group approach, though it could drip with sarcasm and erupt in violent shows of temper. Every once in a while, something valuable could come of these impromptu confabs.

“What’s with the two pawns?” Sal asked. “Is the killer telling us he’s gonna start murdering victims in pairs?”

“Not likely,” Helen said.

“He didn’t kill Pearl along with the maid,” Sal pointed out.

“Exactly. It would have been too impromptu. He’s in charge. He wants to decide when, where, and how Pearl dies.”

“What is likely?” Fedderman asked.

“Occam’s razor,” Harold said.

Sal said, “What the hell does that mean?”

“Whatever is simplest is most likely the truth.”

“Who’s Occam?” Fedderman asked.

Quinn really felt like lighting a cigar.

“It doesn’t matter,” Helen said. “What Harold said is usually true. It’s commonsense reasoning.”

Harold looked triumphant, but only for a few seconds. “On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes said—”

“Forget about Sherlock Holmes,” Helen said. “It’s the two pawns that interest me.”

“The incident of the two pawns,” Harold said, and was ignored.

“There are six murders that we know about, in this latest string of killings.” Lido said. He was farthest away from the nucleus of the group, at his computer. Usually above the fray.

“Meaning what?” Fedderman asked.

“Each player has eight pawns at the beginning of a chess game,” Helen said. “The killer might be telling us we’re out of pawns, and the game is going to get more serious. Bishops, rooks, knights . . . We’re going to be playing with the royalty of chess.”

“I say the two pawns means he’s going to kill two more women,” Sal said.

“Occam again,” Helen said.

“Sherlock Holmes—” Harold began.

“That’s most likely,” Helen said. “Two more victims. He’s getting anxious, more and more in the grip of his compulsion.”

“Sherlock—”

“He’ll want to kill more often,” Fedderman said.

“He isn’t wrapped up in all that mapping and distance for nothing,” Helen said. “I’d say he’s eager to get to his final destination.”

“New York,” Sal and Fedderman said simultaneously.

“Most likely,” Harold said. “He wants to make it here.”

Sal gave him a look.

“Where Quinn lives,” Harold added.

When they were gone, Quinn fired up a cigar, sat at his desk, and tried to figure out what to make of it all.

12

He was sitting on a wooden folding chair, alone at a small round table covered with a white cloth. It was one of many in the beige-toned conference room. On each table were a small writing tablet, a cheap ballpoint pen, and a slender glass vase containing a single red rose. The killer’s rose looked as if it needed water.

Speed dating, the killer thought. What a useful idea.

Everyone had ten minutes to convince the prospective date at a table to take a chance. Just meet somewhere for a cup of coffee, maybe. Or a drink. An exploratory date. If the suitor (so called) was interested, he or she could arrange a date, or at least exchange phone numbers. If, as happened most of the time, the spark wasn’t struck, tables were changed when a chime sounded, indicating ten minutes had elapsed.

The starting chime set in motion the dozen or so men clustered at one end of the room. The women sat at the tables.

Here they come, Alma Fenster thought, wondering if you could actually smell testosterone. They were an unlikely looking bunch, dressed every way from motorcycle gang member to Sunday school teacher. There was one guy wearing a conservative blue blazer and khakis, deck shoes with no socks—like Mr. Suburban who’d lost his way and found himself in the big city.

Yet there was something about him. A kind of easy sophistication that peeked through no matter what. He wasn’t what you’d call spectacularly handsome, but he was hard to find fault with in a way that Alma liked. He could best be described by the word pleasant.

But would he like her?

She dispensed with a guy who seemed to love the rooftop pigeons he kept more than anything else. Next came an elderly man who was obviously drunk. He left before his ten minutes were up, after Alma had declined suggestions encompassing half the Kama Sutra.

Then the pleasant-looking guy took a seat at Alma’s table.

“Hi, I’m Corey,” he said. Then he smiled. “It’s my real name, actually. Who are you, really?”

“Alma Fenster.” God! She felt herself blush. “I wouldn’t make that one up.”

He seemed to consider the name. “I could learn to like it,” he said.

She laughed. Some lies you appreciate. And some truths. “And if it was your own name?”

He gave her a grin that melted her. “Honestly,” he said, “I’d change it to Corey.” He leaned closer. “Have I insulted you?”

“No. You’ve honored me with the truth.”

“Ah! A woman with common sense.”

“I’d like to think so.”

“I don’t need ten minutes. I knew before I sat down I wanted to walk out of here with you.”

Alma was flustered. She had to fight the instinct to jump up and run for the door. She could yell that she’d forgotten to turn off the oven—something like that. She didn’t make friends easily, much less lovers.

Her voice was halting. “Maybe we should simply exchange phone numbers, then think about this when we get home.”

“I’ve already thought about it,” he said.

Alma considered herself to be an average-looking woman, a blonde about ten pounds overweight with a weak chin.

Of course, lots of men liked a weak chin. Something sexy about the overbite, or so she’d heard.

“Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he said. “So we can talk more than—”

The ten minute chime interrupted him.

He stood up and crooked his elbow, offering his arm. “Let’s go, Alma,” he said through that damned smile that sent her into a tizzy.

Tizzy. Her mother used to use that word a lot.

Her mother also had told her that the brass ring didn’t come around very often. Corey looked like the brass ring.

Alma gripped her purse and stood up. “There’s a Starbuck’s on the corner,” she said.

His smile widened. “On every corner.”

Alma thought that was reasonably funny, even when you stopped to think about it and realized it was an old joke and almost true.

She could feel the eyes of other women on her as she and Corey made their way to the door. She was glad now that she’d gotten her hair done at Tina’s this morning, thinking that maybe she’d have something to tell Tina when she saw her next week.

“I was surprised to find someone like you in a place like that,” he said, as they walked through the hot night toward Starbuck’s.

“How so?”

“A looker like you . . . you know the line. In this case, it happens to be accurate. Seriously, what were you doing there?”

They walked awhile as she thought. “It’s this city,” she said. “New York.”

“What is?

“The problem. It’s so heartless here sometimes. And it’s true that being alone in a crowded place can be excruciatingly lonely. Especially if you’re like me.”

“Which is how?”

“I find it difficult to make friends.”

He patted her shoulder. “You made one tonight. I’ll prove it by rescuing you and spiriting you out of the city to somewhere interesting.”

Spiriting me. At least this guy has a vocabulary.

“How about somewhere quiet?” she said. “There’s always something making noise here, from jackhammers to horns honking. Even dogs barking.”

He smiled. “I’ll take you somewhere quiet. Not far, but in another state. We can read and eat bonbons.”

“That sounds pretty good,” she said, and moved closer to him.

13

Three days later a woman’s body was found on a beach in New Jersey. She’d been tortured with a knife and with cigarettes, and the initials D.O.A. were carved in her forehead.

Her name was Alma Fenster, and it took Jerry Lido only a few hours to determine that, other than their torture and death at the hands of the same killer, she wasn’t connected with any of the other victims.

“Whatever they had in common is the same as with a lot of women,” Lido said. “They were all in their twenties, all lived alone and were real or bottled blondes. There are no other suspects in their deaths—or at least none more so than the killer who carved his calling card in their foreheads. None of them were fabulously rich or depressingly poor. None of them were in any way famous.”

“We could say they were all attractive,” Quinn said. “And all were tortured, murdered, and mutilated by the same fanatic. None of them was raped.”

“This sicko gets off in other ways,” Sal said.

“No semen was found,” Harold said. “But he might have used a condom to do . . . whatever he does.”

“Can’t get it up,” Sal said.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Quinn cautioned.

“No,” Helen agreed, “not for sure. He might simply prefer his other kind of sex. The torture and death bring him relief.”

“He tortures them with cigarettes,” Fedderman said, “but we never find cigarette butts.”

“He knows about DNA,” Sal said. “Like just about everybody who watches cop TV or goes to the movies to see Godfather Twelve.”

“Or Rocky Forty.” Helen said.

“Or The Hobbit and the Obfuscation of Evidence,” Harold said.

“What does that mean?” Fedderman asked.

Quinn said, “He means we have plenty of evidence, but we don’t know how to read it.”

“Except for the fact that the killer skipped New York, where we expected him to kill,” Lido said. “And the knight is the only chess piece that can jump over other pieces.”

“New Jersey is south of New York,” Quinn pointed out.

“Think time and sequence instead of geography,” Helen said. “New York was the most likely place for him to make his next kill. His kind of big apple. Instead he chose another, safer place.”

Quinn rubbed his chin. “Do you really think he’s that devious?”

“Oh, yes,” Helen said.

14

The temperature made it into the nineties the next morning and stayed there. The sky was cloudless. Drought threatened to attack New York along with the heat. The air conditioners at Q&A never stopped running. One of them dripped condensation into a green rubber bucket, placed to protect the bare hardwood floor. Each drop of water into the bucket was louder than the last.

Like the previous brown package, this latest one contained two chess pieces. But this time they were knights.

Helen uncrossed her arms and stood up from where she was perched on the edge of Pearl’s desk.

“Anybody here not know how to play chess?” she asked.

When no one answered she went on, “Anyone good at it?”

“Really good?” Quinn asked.

“Competent would do.”

“I’m a poker player,” Sal said.

“I’m really good at chess,” Jerry Lido said, from over by his computer.

“What to know in this case,” Helen said, “is that the knight has a special ability, and a restriction. While it’s the only chess piece that can move over other pieces, while doing so it has to move either two squares in any direction, and then one square at a right angle, either way. Or one square in any direction, then two squares at a right angle, either way.”

“I think we all know that much,” Sal growled.

Lido called up a map on his computer, and they gathered around it.

“He’s going to skip New York again,” Lido said, “just as you described the last time, Helen.”

“And the two knights means he might be doubling his distances.”

“That’s the way he thinks,” Quinn said.

Lido measured the distances. “If he doubles his distances, then right angles east,” he said, “that puts him out to sea.” He sat back. “He’s got to go left, so he’s going to kill in Maine, on the mainland.”

“What about water? He always kills on beaches, or somewhere else where he and the victim are near water.”

“Plenty of swimming pools in Maine,” Harold said.

“And lakes,” Sal added.

Quinn rubbed his chin and studied the area Lido had delineated by bordering it with red ink. The killer didn’t know it, but the noose was about to tighten.

“We’ll call motels and lodges in the area,” Quinn said.

“That’s almost half of Maine,” Helen pointed out.

“We’ll alert the law in those places, let them spread the word in their jurisdictions.”

“What if he kills her in her home or apartment?”

“She’ll be from New York,” Quinn said, “even if he kills her in Maine.”

Helen smiled sadly. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be thumbing his nose at us.” She shifted to face Quinn and pointed. “At you.”

“Is it that important to him?” Sal asked.

“All-important,” Helen said.

Quinn said nothing.

They spent the rest of the morning working the phones.

It was nine o’clock the next morning when Quinn got the call on his cell phone. He and Pearl were driving toward Creighton County, Maine, the center of the area where Lido had calculated the killer would take his next victim.

His iPhone identified the caller as anonymous, but somehow Quinn knew who it was.

“I’m having fun,” the voice said. “Are you?”

And the connection was broken.

Quinn was aware of Pearl sitting straight up beside him, listening.

“It was him,” Quinn said. “Taunting. Playing games.” He didn’t have to remind Pearl that this was the sicko who had taped her rigid and silent as a log and then stuffed her under a motel bed with a dead maid.

They drove along for a long time, the only sound the ticking of the tires over tarred highway seams. Then Quinn’s cell phone chimed again.

When he saw that the caller was Creighton County Sheriff Will Chalmers his heart picked up a beat and his foot eased farther down on the accelerator. Chalmers was a former Iowa Sheriff who’d retired and moved to Maine. Quinn had met him, liked him, trusted him.

Careful to keep his speeding and rocking black Lincoln Town Car on the road, he pressed the cell to the side of his head. Said simply, “Quinn.”

“I’m calling from the Antler Lodge,” Chalmers said. He sounded excited, but holding it in. “They had a guest who thought she heard a woman scream. When the Inn manager went to investigate, he was stabbed to death. He lived long enough to call emergency on his cell phone. A woman in the room was dead. Carved up and burned with cigarettes. Looked like one of the cigarettes touched her cloth gag and burned it through so she could make some noise. Didn’t last long, though. Asshole slit her throat.”

“You sure it was—”

“He’d gotten around to carving a D on her forehead.” Chalmers let Quinn digest that news, then said, “Listen, Quinn, your killer’s on the run in the woods. He’s hemmed in between the law and the lake. Case you don’t know, that’s Creighton Lake.”

Pearl had moved closer to Quinn. She wanted to hear every word of this phone call. She reached for the printout of Lido’s map with motels and lodges on it and spread it out on her lap. They needed the quickest route possible.

He heard the map rattle in her lap as she pointed at a turn coming up.

Chalmers spoke. “Antler Lodge is—”

“I know where it is,” Quinn said. He didn’t mention the “catch me if you can” phone call from the killer.

“You hurry, Quinn, and you could maybe get in on this.”

Quinn hurried.

The old black Lincoln was like a ghost on the highway, and Quinn was Death on a mission.

Quinn vs. D.O.A.—the final showdown is yet to come!

Don’t miss

FRENZY

Coming from Pinnacle in October 2014

Photo by Jennifer Lutz-Bauer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A multiple Edgar and Shamus Award winner—including the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award—John Lutz is the author of over 30 novels. His novel SWF Seeks Same was made into the hit movie Single White Female (1992), starring Bridget Fonda, and later remade as The Roommate (2011), starring Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester, and The Ex was a critically acclaimed HBO feature. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and Sarasota, Florida. In describing his serial-killer thrillers, John Lutz says: “I’m trying to provide readers with the kind of roller-coaster ride that will scare them a lot but compel them to buy another ticket.”

His website is johnlutzonline.com.

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Copyright © 2014 John Lutz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-0-7860-3631-8

First electronic edition: August 2014