Quinn said, “Me,” and entered Pearl’s room from the adjacent one.
“Me, too,” Pearl said.
He walked over and kissed her gently on the forehead, as if she were a real patient.
“Everything a go?” she asked.
He smiled. “We just need another player.”
“Weaver all set next door?”
“She’s always set,” Quinn said.
“She’s gotten the crap kicked out of her more than once when it could have been me instead.”
“She’s an adrenaline addict.”
“So are we, Quinn.”
He didn’t argue with her.
“So is he,” she added.
Quinn knew who she meant.
He bent over and kissed her cool forehead again. “Get some sleep,” he said, then went into the adjacent room.
The idea was that, faced with a choice between the two women, the one the Gremlin really wanted would seem all the more genuine. If Helen was right, and unless everything she’d learned about human behavior was wrong, the killer would pass on the supposedly back-from-the-dead woman and go for Pearl.
He’d be pressed for time, and would have to make his choice quickly if he were to take a hostage and escape from the building before his presence was known and staff and police would close in.
That was when things would start happening fast.
Pearl thought, Let the games begin.
She closed her eyes, but not all the way.
72
St. Louis, the present
It was mid-afternoon when Marta Jones, a maid at the Adam Park hotel in St. Louis, opened the door to room 333 and saw a white feather drift out. She knew immediately that it was from a pillow, and it might signify that the room was a mess. It always surprised Marta how destructive some of the guests were, especially if there was liquor involved. The Adam Park wasn’t cheap, and Marta thought it was people with more money than they needed who caused most of the trouble and made most of the mess.
She hoped this wouldn’t be too bad as she rolled her linen cart back a few inches so she could make the turn, then pushed it past the opened door and backed into the room.
My God! The place looked as if there’d been a snowstorm inside. More goose down. So much white and red.
Red?
The snow was spotted with red here and there, and smeared with red. As if it were real snow and someone had taken swipes at it with a paint rag.
Then Marta saw a young blond woman lying on the floor, with blood on her shoulder and chest and one side of her face. There was something awkward and not quite right about the way she was lying in the goose down. She was on her back, legs and arms akimbo. Almost as if trying to make a snow angel. Marta was momentarily paralyzed. Arms and legs didn’t bend quite that way. She moved two steps closer.
Stopped and stood still again. Peered without moving forward. She didn’t want to get closer to the blond woman, yet she wanted to see her better. She leaned forward and focused.
And saw that there was some space between the bloody neck and the head. She realized with a lurch of her stomach that the woman had been beheaded. And her limbs had been detached and lain or propped so they were close to where they’d be if only they weren’t severed. One arm was slightly longer than the other. It was a man’s arm, with an expensive-looking gold expansion-band wristwatch. Marta looked closer and saw that the watch was a Timex.
And there was the rest of the dead man, lying near the sofa, his limbs severed and carefully propped or laid near where they’d been removed. Marta didn’t know him but thought she recognized him. He’d made a pest of himself with some of the hotel guests.
Marta had been numb, but now she was slightly dizzy. And more than slightly nauseated. Fearing she might vomit, she hurried into the bathroom.
From the bathtub a pair of infinitely sad blue eyes stared up at her. Dead eyes. The nude dead woman in the white porcelain tub was almost as white as the tub itself. Water had been run on her until most of her blood and other body fluids had been washed down the drain.
Her body was taut and shapely and looked young, but her face looked prematurely old.
In a way, it had been old.
Marta bumped her hip painfully on her linen cart as she ran from room 333, down from the steps leading from the catwalk, then the shallow wooden steps leading toward the levee.
She screamed as she ran, waved her arms, pointed back toward the hotel. One of her shoes flew off and she felt cool mud squish between her toes. At first people thought she might simply be enjoying herself, joking, a vacationing refugee from some boring job, suddenly set free and screaming with relief.
But it didn’t sound like relief.
“Mortandad! Policia!”
Someone said, “I think she wants the police.”
The federal park ranger for that stretch of waterfront had been observing this from the beginning. His name was John Randall, but most of the river people who knew him called him Rocket.
Rocket saw now that the woman had a maid’s uniform on, and she was definitely headed for the river. She was limping now, dragging one leg. Soon she’d be close enough to the brown rushing water that he wouldn’t be able to catch up and save her, if she was one of those who needed saving. A swimmer didn’t have to get very far out in the river before the deceptively powerful current would take charge. Some people who went in here had been found dead as far south as New Orleans.
The decision was made for Rocket when he suddenly recognized the woman. Marta! One of the maids at the Adam Park.
Marta seemed unhinged, and definitely was headed for the river. He didn’t know if that was on purpose or if she simply didn’t realize how soon she’d be getting wet. The way she was waving her arms and yelling, it was obvious that she wasn’t going to slow down.
He began to run. He was a big man, a year out of Florida State, where he’d gone on a football scholarship as a wide receiver. It was no mystery why he was called Rocket.
He almost caught up with Marta, calling her name, reaching out for her and barely missing.
She seemed to run harder.
He tackled her, but as gently as possible, and they both were down on the edge of the water. What felt like gravel was only a few inches beneath them. Rocket thought it might have cut up his right knee.
The water lapped coldly at Marta, and she stopped struggling and began to tremble. Rocket held her close, saying over and over that she should take it easy, take it easy.
Marta calmed down somewhat and stared up at him. It gave him a jolt, how horrified she looked.
“Policia!” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling at her to keep her calm. “Show me. If we need to, we’ll call the locals.” He held his grin. “What happened, Marta? you see a mouse?”
“Policia! . . .”
73
St. Louis, the present
St . Louis, Quinn decided, was a hotter place to live than New York. Most of the people in and around the Adam Park hotel had on casual clothes, jeans, shorts, pullover shirts, moccasins, sandals, or jogging shoes. Cross the street, stroll down to the river bank, and you were near the Mississippi. The wide, lazy river that held its secrets.
Even before it soared over the riverfront, the famously beautiful and utterly useless Arch had its fans. People who might as well have had TOURIST stamped all over them were lined up to enter the nearest leg. New York Police Commissioner Harley Renz, in his gray Joseph Abboud suit, white shirt, and polished black wingtip shoes, didn’t seem to belong anywhere near this bunch.