John Lutz Bundle Read Online Free PDF Page B

gagged. That was breaking the rules.
    Then he remembered. Or thought he did.
    “Flo?”
    She reacted immediately, tensing her buttocks and straining to look in the direction of his voice.
    “If you’re a good girl, Flo, maybe I’ll take you out for breakfast tomorrow.” Letting her know he was staying the long night through.
    She managed only one of her whimpers.
    He decided the bottoms of Flo’s bare feet shouldn’t be ignored.

6
    Quinn was up late at the kitchen’s tiny gray Formica table, smoking a cheap cigar and studying the Elzner murder file. Rather, the copy of the file, which Renz had provided.
    He was drinking beer from a thick, clouded tumbler that looked as if it had been stolen from a diner years ago. The foam head had disappeared except for a light, sudsy film along the glass’s sides, and the beer was warm.
    Quinn exhaled cigar smoke and leaned back away from the open file. There really wasn’t much of value inside it. Sure, there were things that didn’t quite add up, that suggested someone other than Martin Elzner had fired the shots that killed Elzner and his wife. But almost always in cases of violent death, there were such loose ends, questions that would never be answered. Lives that were stopped abruptly left them behind as if to haunt and not be forgotten. If you were a cop long enough, you didn’t expect to ever understand everything.
    He propped the cigar in a cracked saucer he was using as an ashtray, then took a sip of beer. There was one thing, though, that stuck like a bur in his mind. The groceries. The Elzners must have bought them before the stores closed, then were putting them away when the shooting occurred. But no one in any of the surrounding grocery stores or all-night delis, where they might have bought groceries, recalled them being there. Of course it was possible they’d shopped just down the block from their apartment and not been recognized. Or had been recognized and forgotten. People didn’t go around paying attention to everything around them in case they might be quizzed later.
    So, maybe the groceries were going to remain another of those unanswered questions.
    But there was also the gun, a Walther .38-caliber semiautomatic. It was a large enough caliber to make plenty of noise, yet no one in neighboring apartments had heard shots.
    That, too, was possible, especially at the time of the Elzners’ deaths. But it made the marks on the gun and the bullet nicks all the more likely to have been made by a silencer.
    Which, of course, would mean a murderer other than the late Martin Elzner. One who couldn’t risk making noise, and who knew no one would bother using a silencer for a murder-suicide. Missing silencer: a killer still at large.
    Quinn glanced at his watch, a long-ago birthday gift from May. Past midnight. He decided to go to bed. Renz had set it up for him to visit the Elzner apartment tomorrow morning, so Quinn wanted to be alert, and to resemble as much as possible the man he’d been.
    Still am!
    He closed the file, then snuffed out his cigar in the saucer and finished the tepid beer that would help him get to sleep.
    Quinn was satisfied with his chances. He never expected or needed a brass ring.
    A toehold would do.
    In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, then leaned close and examined them in the mirror. Too yellow, and they seemed slightly crooked, and maybe that was a cavity way back there. He’d neglected them too long. A trip to a dentist wouldn’t be a bad idea for his appearance. He’d lost a couple of molars in a long-ago fight, and broken the bridgework since. Other than that, he still had his own teeth. He smiled, then shook his head at the rawboned, luckless thug looking back at him. Rough. Downright grizzly. Scary.
    The smile disappeared and he turned away, sickened with himself.
    He’d sunk. He could see it now that he was looking up again. He’d sunk so goddamned far! An outcast, a sexual predator the neighbors whispered about and