Switch by John Lutz Page B

tricky.” Squatted down as he was, he craned his neck and glanced around, as if seeing the upper half of his surroundings clearly for the first time. “Place is big enough to be a museum. Looks kinda like one, the way it’s furnished.”
    â€œWhat about time of death?” Pearl asked. She didn’t want to talk about décor.
    â€œThe victim sometime between midnight and three o’clock this morning. The finger sometime before then.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” Quinn asked.
    â€œThat the finger died before she did?” Nift grinned. “Putrefaction, discoloration, suggest several days, depending on ambient temperature. Also, I gave it the sniff test.” He grinned wickedly at Pearl. “Wanna smell?”
    â€œThat finger’s not the worst smelling thing in this room,” Pearl said angrily.
    Nift ignored her. He’d gotten a rise out of Pearl again. He was temporarily ahead on points in the game he insisted they play.
    Like Quinn, Pearl was a former NYPD homicide detective. Now they were part of Quinn and Associates Investigations—Q&A, as it was commonly called. The agency was formed when Quinn decided to extend his avocation beyond hunting down serial killers, which was his area of expertise. Q&A was more of a traditional detective agency now, and its employees were part owners and had a stake in its success.
    Because of Quinn’s legendary and well-earned reputation for tracking and apprehending serial killers, the agency sometimes still did work for hire for the city. That work wasn’t exclusively serial killer cases; now it included almost any kind of criminal case that was high profile, sensitive, or for any other reason important to the city, or to the political well-being of its police commissioner. These contracts were mainly because the police commissioner, Harley Renz, and Quinn went back a long way.
    Not that they liked each other. Quinn lived by his code, and Renz was without a code and enthusiastically corrupt. Still, the two men got along. Frequently they could help each other obtain what they wanted, however different those wants might be.
    The techs from the crime scene unit were still going over the vast apartment with their lights and chemicals, cameras and print powder.
    â€œMaybe they’ll find something,” Nift said, motioning with his arm to take in the activity around him.
    â€œI know what they won’t find,” Quinn said.
    Nift straightened up beside his black bag and looked at him. “You know something about what went on here?”
    â€œMaybe,” Quinn said.

P ART O NE
    May 6, 2:47 p.m.
    It all started not-so-innocently enough.
    Ida Beene from Forest, Ohio, who called herself Ida French, knew exactly what she was doing when she slid into the backseat of the parked limo in her preoccupied manner, pretending it was a mistake and she’d thought it was a different limo, one that was waiting for her.
    Craig Clairmont, Ida’s current love interest, watched her from a nearby doorway. He could make out her pale features inside the limo’s tinted rear window. Watched her mouth work as over and over she said how sorry she was, how she’d made a terrible mistake by entering the wrong car. Her active, shapely form was never still as she jabbered and waved her arms, pretending to be a bit zany but at the same time apologetic. All the while, he knew she was substituting the gray leather Gucci purse on the seat with her almost identical knock-off Gucci bag she’d bought on Canal Street for thirty dollars.
    An embarrassing mistake, that was all. She kept repeating that as she reversed her trim, shapely derriere out of the limo, yakking, yakking all the time, overplaying it, keeping Alexis Hoffermuth distracted and confused. Her words drifted to Craig: “Oh, my God! So sorry, sorry. I’m such a goofball. Never did this before ... should have been paying attention ... please, please forgive