Read Pulse for Free Online Page A

last been watching. A free movie channel—no clue there. A TV Guide sat on top of the TV. Harold leafed through it to see what movies had been playing on that channel the previous night: They Drive by Night , starring Humphrey Bogart. If victim and killer had been here during that time, had the movie been the victim’s choice, or the killer’s? Or had the TV been switched off before the killer entered the apartment? Or had it been on mute and used as a night-light while love was being made? Or something like love.
    Harold joined Sal in the kitchen. The refrigerator held some basic foods like milk, a head of lettuce, a white foam box containing some tired-looking pasta. No meat. Had the victim been a vegetarian?
    All in all, it was the kind of apartment you’d picture four young women sharing. A comfortably sloppy, temporary kind of place. A stopover on the road to the good life.
    The bathroom was a mess. Bloody towels were on the floor and in the bathtub. The faucets were smeared with blood. Here must be where the killer had seriously cleaned up after the murder in the park.
    “No point in both of us going in there,” Sal said. “Why don’t you start on the bedrooms?”
    Harold nodded and moved on down the hall. He was holding his hand cupped over his nose.
    Sal left the bathroom as they’d found it. Maybe Macy had fought back, and some of this blood was the killer’s. It might be enough to establish his DNA profile. Even if his DNA wasn’t in any of the data banks and couldn’t identify him, it could be matched with a sample from the suspect himself—if they could find him.
    Sal went into the first bedroom he came to after leaving the bathroom. Harold was in there. Sal noticed that Harold held a hand on his stomach as they examined the bedroom. There was blood smeared here and there, too, as if deliberately. Nothing like the bathroom. Sal hoped Harold wasn’t going to be sick or make some kind of fuss.
    “Why don’t you look around the other rooms some more?” Sal growled. “I’ll check out the drawers and closets in here.”
    “I’ll be okay,” Harold said, swallowing hard and crossing the room to open a closet door.
    Harold, Harold , Sal thought.
    “These clothes,” Harold said, with his head still in the closet, muffling his words, “they’re pretty good-sized. And here’s something, Sal. She wore a lift in one shoe.”
    “That’s her roommate’s closet,” Sal said.
    “Ah!”
    “You notice something’s missing?” Sal asked.
    “The lift in the other shoe?”
    “No, Harold. A computer. How many people do you know who don’t own a computer? Especially if they’re the victim’s age.”
    “I could count them on one thumb,” Harold said. Then he thought. “Maybe CSU took it.”
    “It wasn’t on the list,” Sal said, though he hadn’t seen any list. It was just that Harold was beginning to irk him.
    “Ah,” Harold said.
    They finally left the apartment with some sense of who the victim had been—which was part of their purpose. They also hadn’t discovered anything in the nature of a clue that Quinn, Pearl, and Q&A’s fifth associate, Larry Fedderman, might have overlooked during a previous visit. No surprise there. They were an effective trio; even the lanky, potbellied Fedderman, who dressed like a bewildered refugee in a suit he had found, had a mental gear for every problem.
    Now for the main purpose of their visit to the building: interviewing the dead woman’s neighbors.
    That could be a waste of time, but not always.
    As Harold was fond of saying, it was surprising what they didn’t know they knew.

8
    Central Florida, 2002
    D aniel was finishing topping off the SUV’s tank at the gas pump he’d managed to get working at the storm-damaged service station. The few people who drove past glanced at him but saw nothing unusual in what he was doing. The station obviously wasn’t open, but this wasn’t an ordinary time. People did what they must in order to