Carnage: Short Story Read Online Free Page A

signs said SCENIC LOOKOUT, he pulled the car over and parked at an angle at a curb, near some picnic benches.
    There was a nice view of the beach from there, with sailboats in the distance, but the killer concluded that it was nothing special. Which explained why he was the only one at the scenic outlook.
    He removed from his pocket the cheap drugstore disposable phone he’d bought, punched in Quinn’s cell phone number, and idly walked toward the gentle surf.
    When Quinn identified himself, the killer simply said Patricia Angelina’s name, and then broke the connection.
    Quinn would know who’d called. The killer was sure of that.
    He walked closer to the sea and threw the phone underarm into the water. It skipped on the sea like a stone, and then sank.
    He remembered what Pat had said about surfing and texting and smiled.
    Some dolphin.

7
    A few of the New York media carried the Nickleton story. One local daily news program, Minnie Miner ASAP, mentioned the fact that what had become a string of ocean-side murders was moving along the coast toward New York. Quinn, and Renz, knew it might not be long before the nasty news genie was out of the bottle.
    “Something in the mail for you,” Pearl said.
    They were in the living room of the brownstone, and she’d just brought up what looked like the usual assortment of mail from the box downstairs.
    Quinn held out his hand and she placed in it a small package wrapped in brown paper and tape.
    “Looks familiar,” Pearl said. “Except for the North Carolina postmark. Same mechanical looking untraceable printing.”
    “Where’s Jodi?”
    “Outside. She’s a big enough girl she can be in on this,” Pearl said about her daughter, the attorney.
    “If she happens to walk in on it,” Quinn said.
    Pearl didn’t reply, knowing it wasn’t the time to get into an argument about what Jodi should or shouldn’t know. She watched Quinn sit on the sofa and, leaning forward, use a penknife he carried and carefully open the package.
    Inside were a wadded sheet of Nickleton newspaper and a plastic chess pawn.

8
    They were in the Q&A offices, the part that resembled a squad room, and that prospective clients first saw when they came in through the street door. It was a little past nine in the morning. Fedderman and Quinn were the only ones there.
    A leather sole scuffed on concrete outside and the street door swished open.
    “He’s working his way up the East Coast,” Jerry Lido said when he’d made his way all the way into the office. He’d bumped the door frame as he entered.
    Quinn figured Lido was hungover. Not drunk. Lido worked best when he was soused, but he never came into the office that way.
    Hardly ever.
    His shirt was sloppily tucked in and he needed a shave. Since he’d obviously been drinking last night, Quinn listened closely to what he had to say.
    Lido plopped himself down and booted up his computer. “Another murder farther north on the southeast coast,” he said.
    “A killer with a compass,” Fedderman said.
    Lido ignored him, as if maybe he figured Fedderman was an hallucination. “He started his latest killing binge in Miami, then maybe one in Pompano Beach, then Spindrift, and now Nickleton.” He brought a map up on his computer monitor. “He’s traveling up the coast, stopping and killing approximately the same distance between murders.”
    Quinn paid closer attention, and walked over to look past Lido’s shoulder at the map.
    “The murders were committed here, here, here, and here,” Lido said, pointing with a tremulous forefinger.
    “That doesn’t look like the same distance between them,” Quinn said.
    “I’m not referring to driving distance,” Lido said, “though he’s almost certainly driving. Sometimes the road curves along with the coast.”
    “You’re saying as the crow flies,” Fedderman said.
    Lido grinned. “More like the flamingo. And while the distances aren’t exactly the same, they increase