Urge to Kill Read Free Page B

over him—they thought to talk to him, maybe make sure he was okay—and the guy reached in and removed something from Manders’s suit coat pocket and then shag-assed outta the club.”
    “This is the same guy that shot him?” Quinn asked, wanting to keep the facts straight.
    “Far as we know,” Renz said. “Nobody actually saw a gun. Hardly anyone even noticed there was something wrong. The music went on for another minute or so after Manders went down, and people kept dancing.”
    “Can anyone identify this guy who ran from the club?”
    Renz shook his head no. “It all happened too fast, under conditions where it’d take a while for people to react. Half of them were juiced up on one substance or another anyway. So we got no positive ID in the offing. And nobody knows what was removed from the victim’s pocket. His wallet, stuffed with cash, was intact, as was his Rolex watch and gold ring.”
    “Wedding ring?”
    “No. Manders was divorced five years ago. He was living alone, like you.”
    “What kinda club was it?” Quinn asked, ignoring the barb.
    “Straight clientele, upper to upper-upper class, looking for action.”
    “So that’s what Manders was doing,” Quinn said “and he got a different kind of action than he was looking for.”
    “Could be.”
    “And maybe whoever bent over him wasn’t the shooter but really
was
somebody wanting to help him, and when he realized Manders was dead he ran out of there so he wouldn’t be involved.”
    “So what was taken from the victim’s pocket?”
    Quinn shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe the guy bending over him was feeling for a heartbeat. Coulda been a doctor stepping out on his wife and didn’t want any record that he was there.”
    Renz had to grin. His canine teeth were longer than most people’s, and tinged yellow. “That’s pretty good, the heartbeat thing with the philandering cardiologist. Why you’re such an ace detective. Trouble is, there’s more to my story.”
    It began to rain, hard. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Quinn worked the buttons and raised all the windows, making it even warmer in the car. The windows blurred immediately, isolating Quinn and Renz from the outside world. There was a musty smell now to go with the stale tobacco scent. Nothing moved the sultry air.
    Renz didn’t seem at all discomfited. “Last week an insurance executive, Alan Weeks, was shot to death in Central Park, in front of witnesses too far away to see the killer’s face. They did see the killer lean over the victim and remove something from his pocket before disappearing into the woods.”
    “Not his wallet?”
    “Nope,” Renz said. “Not his expensive pocket watch, either. The bullet that killed Weeks was fired from a twenty-five-caliber handgun, but
not
the same gun that killed Manders. Nothing about the murders seems to connect Weeks and Manders, other than bullets in the head. And possibly whatever was removed from their pockets.”
    Quinn drummed his fingertips for a while on the steering wheel, making a sound something like the rain pattering on the car roof.
    “Maybe coincidence,” he said, not believing it. He’d been conditioned not to believe it. Coincidence and detective work were incompatible.
    Renz flashed another canine smile in the wavering light making its way through the rain-washed windows. “Like it was coincidental we bumped into each other tonight.”
    Quinn stopped with the fingers. “Fate?”
    Renz shook his head no. “Design.” The grin stayed. “Another homicide like the first two,” he said, “and we’ve definitely got ourselves a serial killer and all the media hype that goes with it. I need you and your team ready to go in the event that happens. Usual terms.”
    For particularly difficult and sensitive cases, the clever and immensely ambitious Renz called on Quinn and his team of former NYPD detectives, Pearl Kasner and Larry Fedderman, to act as his personal investigators. Their work-for-hire status