There was only one hitch.
David explained it to her over their first breakfast at home. They were almost like a married couple talking over…the things Shellie imagined married people discussed.
“I sublease the place,” David said, after swallowing a bite of buttered toast. He took a sip of the coffee he’d assured her was just right. “Part of the deal is that I can’t have a roommate.”
Shellie paused in raising a bite of egg on her fork. “You mean my living here has to be a secret?”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t put it so melodramatically. I mean, you don’t have to hide or skulk around. A big apartment building like this, hardly anybody knows or even notices their neighbors. Once you close the door to the hall behind you, they don’t know which apartment you’ve just exited. In the elevator, they don’t know which floor you’ve come from. What’s more, they don’t care. There’s a rapid tenant turnover here.”
“Am I supposed to look both ways in the hall before I go out the door?”
He smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt. What I mean, though, darling, is just don’t make it a point to get to know the neighbors. You don’t have to run and hide if anybody sees you.”
“You make it sound like a game.”
“It is one,” he said. “The way subleases and rental agreements work, lots of New Yorkers play it. If we lose, they’ll throw you out. Which means they’ll throw us both out, because I’ll go with you.” He shrugged. “Getting evicted wouldn’t be the end of the world. It happens somewhere in the city every day.”
“Not to us,” she said, then chewed and swallowed her bite of egg. “Not here. I promise to be careful.”
“Probably,” he said, “no one would turn us in even if they did notice you were staying here. Most people mind their own business. They might even approve of your presence. Who couldn’t approve of you?”
A game, she thought, and finished her breakfast.
More like a romantic movie. The Phantom Tenant.
Like a movie. And I’m the star.
David wouldn’t know that was how she saw it, she thought, so why not give herself top billing?
It worked so well. David was right: no one in the building paid much attention to anyone else. If the tenants passed in the halls or found themselves with one another at the elevator, they usually merely nodded, sometimes smiled. On the elevator itself, they followed elevator etiquette and stood stone-faced staring at the ascending or descending number above the sliding door.
Entering or leaving the building was the same way; often there wasn’t even an exchange of glances. A few times someone held open the heavy street door for Shellie. She’d thanked them perfunctorily and hurried along. She acted the way they did, the way most New Yorkers acted—preoccupied. They passed or had brief contact with thousands of people every day and within a few days forgot all but a few.
Shellie was happy. And the apartment was spacious by New York standards, and with a nice view from a high floor. The furnishings were traditional, with a pale tan leather sofa and matching armchair, a TV behind the doors of a wooden wall unit that also had shelves holding knickknacks and a lineup of books that seemed chosen more for color than content. The furniture, the complementing drapes and carpet, the framed art prints on the wall gave the apartment a composed, decorator look. It was a look she liked, and it took only a few weeks for Shellie to regard it as home.
She would have been even happier if David spent more time in town, but they made the most of it when he was home.
And the most of it was quite a lot.
9
The present
Renz had shot off his mouth about a profiler, so he figured he’d better have a profile. He was with Quinn and his team in the Seventy-ninth Street office he’d gotten for them at city expense. It was a ground-floor apartment, really, in a building that was being renovated. This unit hadn’t been touched yet, but it wasn’t in bad condition, with cream-colored walls and blinds still on the windows. There were light rectangles where wall hangings had been removed, and an outline on the hardwood floor where the carpet had been taken up. But the paint was clean. Renz had ordered three desks and four chairs, a four-drawer steel file cabinet, a printer and fax machine, and a used desk computer. He knew they all had laptops, except maybe Fedderman. As far as a coffee machine or other niceties, the detectives were on their own.
Pearl had bought a Braun brewer and dragged in an old table the workmen upstairs were going to throw away. An NYPD computer whiz had set up a broadband wireless system for their computers, with a router over near the coffee machine. The door had a good lock, the workmen upstairs usually didn’t make too much noise, and there was an old air conditioner that no one would bother stealing in one of the windows.
Quinn was within walking distance of the place but would sometimes drive his old Lincoln, and Renz had gotten them an unmarked city Chevy.
They had a home. They had wheels. It was an efficient setup.
Quinn and Fedderman sat in the identical wood swivel chairs behind their identical gray steel desks, while Pearl perched on her desk’s front edge. Renz had pulled her desk chair out and was seated on it. So there was a chair for the profiler when she arrived, as long as Pearl was content without one. Quinn made a mental note to scare up another extra chair. He’d have asked Pearl to do it, but she’d let him know she’d done enough, donating the coffeemaker.
There was a knock on the door. Then it opened and the profiler, Helen Iman, cautiously stuck her head in. “Morning, all,” she said, smiling as she entered all the way. She was a very tall woman with a bony but not unattractive face and carelessly styled red hair, as if she cut it herself with dull scissors. Seeing her, Quinn thought, as he often did, that with her long, muscular frame, she’d make a hell of a basketball or volleyball player. But Helen wasn’t into sports. She was into killers. A few years ago she’d quit the NYPD to go into private practice as a corporate psychologist in New Jersey, but she’d soon returned. For her it was no contest between the corporate and the criminal mind. They weren’t exactly the same, and the criminal mind was so much more interesting.
Renz had requested her presence here so Quinn and his team could hear what she had to say.
Pearl offered her coffee, but she declined and sat in the uncomfortable extra chair. It was stained oak with a straight back and had a sturdy but crude look about it, as if it might have been made by one of those religious sects that thrived on discomfort. She was wearing a green business suit and white blouse with a man’s green and black tie. She placed the large brown purse she was carrying on the floor so it leaned against a chair leg.
“Did you read the material I gave you?” Renz asked her.
Helen nodded. “It wasn’t very enlightening.”
Renz looked disappointed.
Helen calmly gave each of them a look, her eyes lingering on Pearl. “There really isn’t much to surmise, since we know nothing about the victims.”
“I need something to feed the media,” Renz said. “Something for my people”—he nodded toward Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman—“in case they get cornered by some smart-ass journalist.”
Helen crossed her long legs. It was quite a show. “I understand, and I can give you the usual, even though I’m sure you already know most of it. Our killer’s probably between twenty and forty and had a horrible childhood during which he developed a hatred for women. He might be married—”
“Married?” Renz interrupted.