Read Carnage: Short Story for Free Online

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