Chill of Night n-6

by John Lutz

“Signing off. If I do weaken and shoot myself, I’ll leave you all my stuff.” She snapped the phone closed and slid it back in her purse. “Pull over there,” she said to the eyes in the mirror. “By that Starbucks.” She pointed across the street.

  The cab veered to the curb near the intersection. “Whatever you want, ma’am.”

  I wish. As she withdrew her hand from her purse, her knuckles brushed paper, the morning’s meager mail she’d hurriedly grabbed from her box in the lobby when she left the building. She’d stuffed it unexamined into her purse and stepped outside in time to hail an unoccupied cab immediately, thinking it must be her lucky day.

  Instead of withdrawing the mail, she reached back into her purse for her wallet to pay cab fare.

  Adelaide hadn’t been serious about drinking a latte, but when she climbed out of the cab, it seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t as if she had anyplace else to go. With her purse slung by its strap over her shoulder, carrying her duffel bag with her dance equipment on the same side of her body, she strode with a graceful leftward list across the street toward Starbucks. The light flashed the signal not to walk, but the way Adelaide walked, traffic turning off Fifty-fourth Street onto First Avenue stopped for her.

  The morning breakfast crowd had mostly cleared out of the place. She ordered a large latte and carried it to a booth, picking up a crookedly folded Daily News on the way. Sometimes when she was low she could lose herself in the news, in accounts of other people’s misfortunes. What Adelaide absolutely and without exception refused to do was to feel sorry for herself. She’d always taken pride in her ability to get back on her feet after a knockdown, ready to fight on. Take the right attitude, be in your own private play, and good things tended to happen. Reality could conform. Besides, Barry might be right about Onion being a box office bomb.

  Within half an hour she’d finished the paper-what parts she wanted to read, anyway-and was in a somewhat more tolerable mood. She sat for a while watching people hurry past outside the window. It seemed everyone had someplace they had to be. Everyone but Adelaide.

  God! Stop it! Like there won’t be other plays Off-Broadway. Off-Off-Broadway.

  On goddamned Broadway!

  Damned straight! There’s always a demand for cute. Irrepressibly cute. And I can be a tsunami of cute.

  She decided to read some more about the Justice Killer. That would cheer her up.

  Then she remembered the mail in her purse. She got it out and spread it on the table like a hand of cards. Three envelopes. The first was an obvious advertisement for life insurance. The second was a chain letter from a college friend she hadn’t talked to in six years, urging her to send copies of the letter to five people she knew and she could avoid contracting an infectious disease and in fact enjoy a run of good luck. Others who’d ignored the instruction to keep the chain growing had met terrible fates. A few had died. Adelaide read the enclosed letter. It explained how you could be healthier, happier, and live longer if you had sex in the presence of certain aromatic candles that were for sale. Not that you had to purchase any of the candles; sending along the letter to five friends was all that was really required of you. Yeah, sure.

  Adelaide set the chain letter aside with the insurance ad to be dropped in the trash receptacle on the way out. Then she opened the third envelope, using a plastic knife, as she’d painfully bent back a fuchsia fingernail while opening the chain letter.

  Holy bejibbers!

  A jury summons.

  28

  Looper had taken the unmarked home and dropped Nell across town where she could get a subway. Trouble was, it had been a long day, the subway train had been stifling, and it was a long, hot walk from the stop to her apartment.

  Nell’s feet hurt enough that when she opened the door she limped over and slumped down on the sofa, even though she saw the red light blinking on her answering machine, signaling with urgency that she had messages. She used her feet to work off her sensible black shoes, stretched her legs almost straight out, and wriggled her toes.

  I’ve got cop’s feet, maybe getting flat. I’m getting to be a goddamned cliche.

  She realized suddenly that something was wrong. The back of her neck was damp with perspiration. The air conditioner in the apartment’s living room window was malfunctioning again. It had been doing that more and more lately. Where was this Terry Adams who’d done work for other cops and was supposed to give her a deal? She’d call someone else, except she needed a deal, and every air conditioner repairman would be running behind in this heat anyway and would put her off. She needed for Adams to show up, or at least call her back and lie about it being a heat wave so everybody’s air conditioner was breaking down and he’d been hard at work since six this morning and she was the very next on his list. That was what Nell expected, anyway. She’d been told the guy was an actor doing home repair work between parts, so she was curious about how convincingly he’d lie.

  It was still too early for the evening to be cooling off, so she decided she’d go out and get some supper at a nice, air-conditioned diner over on Seventh Avenue, then she’d come home and, if it was still too warm in the living room, switch on the window unit in the bedroom and read in bed.

  As she was pushing herself up from the sofa, she noticed again the flashing red light on her answering machine. So maybe the air conditioner guy had left a recorded lie. Before going to the bedroom to get more comfortable shoes, she might as well listen to her messages.

  One message, actually, from Jack Selig. Iris Selig’s husband. The late Iris Selig.

  According to the machine, Selig had phoned just twenty minutes ago. Nell lifted the receiver and punched out the number he’d left at the end of his message before she forgot it.

  Selig picked up on the second ring.

  “I was hoping it was you,” he said, after Nell had identified herself.

  “Have you thought of something?” Nell asked.

  “Thought of…? Oh, no. Well, yes.” He sounded oddly ill at ease. “I’ve thought quite a bit about you, Miss Corey, so I decided I’d give you a call.”

  “About the investigation?”

  “About us.”

  It took a few seconds for what was happening to sink in. This guy was coming on to her! Nell was speechless.

  “I know it’s out of the ordinary, but I thought, so what? It’s been two years since…my wife died. I don’t want you to think I’m callous, and I’ll certainly understand if you say no. You are investigating a series of murders, one of which was that of my wife. But it was two years ago, and I thought it might not interfere in any way with the investigation if we saw each other socially. I don’t know what the police department’s regulations are in such matters-”

  “Say no to what?” Nell interrupted.

  “Dinner. Nothing more. I thought possibly you wanted to talk about something other than the investigation.”

  Nell conjured up a mental image of Selig, distinguished, handsome, obscenely wealthy. Old enough to be her…Well, old enough. Too old. She imagined him on the other end of the line, waiting like a nervous schoolboy for her reaction. It must have taken some guts, calling her.

  “Mr. Selig-”

  “Only dinner and talk,” he assured her. “I know how old I must seem to you.”

  “I’m thirty-nine, Mr. Selig. Nobody seems old to me.”

  He laughed, surprising her. “Oh, you’ll find out differently.”

  This wasn’t a good idea, but something about his offer kept her from saying no. Was it his wealth? Maybe that was part of it. His looks? He was almost movie star handsome in a mature way, but Nell had never imagined herself with someone mature.

  Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. He said only dinner and conversation.

  Hah!

  “Can I think this over, Mr. Selig?”

  “Of course. If you prefer, you might consider it part of your investigation. I don’t mind the third degree, if that’s what it takes to spend time with you.”

 
; She had to smile. “I wouldn’t see dinner with you as part of an investigation.”

  “Then why not tonight, Miss Corey? You can check with your superior officer tomorrow and find out if you did something against the rules.”

  “You’re a bit of a devil, aren’t you, Mr. Selig.” And a charming one.

  “Only a bit, Miss Corey.”

  Part of Nell cautioned her against this. Another part thought of dinner in a cool restaurant with wine and actual tablecloths, unlike the moderately priced places where she usually ate. A restaurant without a counter might make for a nice change.

  “What about Tavern on the Green?” Selig asked.

  He somehow knew what I was thinking.

  Nell had been to Tavern on the Green exactly once, ten years ago. She’d dumped bread pudding in her lap. This guy Selig probably ate at Tavern on the Green once or twice a week. Even more often, if he liked the bread pudding. All she had to do was say yes and-

  “I got your address from the phone book. Give me an answer and I can pick you up within the hour. Are you there, Miss Corey? I have a long list of women to call if you refuse.”

  Nell laughed. It wasn’t as if Selig was a suspect, not after two years. As far as Nell knew, he’d never served on a jury and wasn’t part of the Justice Killer case at all. And what would it hurt if she had dinner with him? She could casually mention it to Beam afterward, keep everything above board. “This would be a date?”

  “Make no mistake about it, Miss Corey, this would be a date.”

  “We seem to have moved away from just dinner and conversation.”

  “We move nowhere you don’t want to go, Miss Corey. But keep in mind my advanced age.”

  She did feel it wouldn’t be a good idea to give in easily. Her mother had long ago told her it was better to be gold than silver. Also, she didn’t like the idea of Selig simply calling her on what might have been a whim. This was probably a multimillionaire, and certainly a wily negotiator, so it wasn’t a good idea to give in and agree to anything easily. Nell didn’t like being maneuvered and wanted to preserve her self respect.

  “How about tomorrow night?” she said.

  “Wonderful!”

  There. She’d forced a compromise.

  “Pick you up sevenish?”

  Sevenish!

  “That would be fine.”

  After hanging up, Nell wondered if she’d lost her mind. On the other hand, what the hell? Dinner and talk. She had to have a life outside the NYPD. Beam would understand. If she told him.

  She thought about how she felt actually dating a man in his sixties who called her “Miss.”

  Pretty good, she decided.

  Adelaide had dinner with three other dancers near the studio in the Village where they all trained. All through the meal and over coffee or additional wine, everyone sympathized with her for the way her good luck had suddenly turned bad, but all agreed it was part and parcel of the business they were in and that they all loved.

  Everyone, including Adelaide, left the restaurant somewhat tipsy from too much wine.

  By the end of the short subway ride to the stop near her apartment, she felt slightly better about losing the Peel the Onion role. Adelaide had found the company misery so loves, and it had elevated her mood. But now, as she made her way up the concrete steps to the surface world, she was sober and hungry again.

  When she turned a corner, the dimly lighted sidewalk ahead was empty. She was vaguely aware of someone rounding the corner behind her. So quiet was this dark street that she could hear faint footfalls, but she didn’t turn around.

  The tip of her tongue worked on a morsel trapped between two of her molars, and her thoughts returned to the restaurant. She hadn’t eaten much of the angel hair pasta she’d ordered, concentrating instead on conversation and her wine glass. As she walked the shadowed pavement, she wondered about her earlier lack of appetite. Definitely, worry had caused it. But what had she been attempting to put out of her mind, losing the Off-Broadway part, or gaining a jury summons?

  Adelaide had served on a jury about six years ago, and she recalled that receiving the summons had been, more than anything, irritating. But after an initial attempt to get out of doing her civic duty, she resigned herself to serving and it hadn’t been such an ordeal. It had been a two day trial about a stolen car, ending in the conviction of the thief. Much of the time had been taken by the prosecutor explaining how to hot wire a car and jump the ignition. She’d found it interesting, but not so much that she wanted to repeat the experience, and not at all useful. Adelaide didn’t think she’d ever have to steal a car.

  The sound of leather soles on concrete behind her was getting closer, but she didn’t give it much thought. As she strode along the sidewalk with a dancer’s elegance, she squeezed her purse, feeling the jury summons still inside it. She was annoyed now by the summons, and moving beyond sobriety toward a headache and the queasy feeling she always got after she drank too much.

  Someone had told her that once the courts got you in their computer they never forgot you. That might be why so many people avoided jury duty-that the system kept drawing on lots of the same people over and over. Adelaide didn’t want to be one of those people, but she was afraid that in the eyes of the court she had become one.

  Afraid.

  She hesitated before regaining her stride. Yes, she wasn’t only irritated this time; she was afraid. The newspapers were full of stories about people doing bizarre things to get out of jury duty. They were afraid to serve, and why shouldn’t they be, with a maniac waiting to kill them if they arrived at the wrong verdict? Adelaide was sure she wouldn’t have been summoned at all if so many other prospective jurors hadn’t shirked their duty. Most of the people she knew said they’d never served on a jury. Supposedly the city was programmed to call on you every ten years or so, not six.

  Six years. Wasn’t it also about six years ago when the Justice Killer’s last victim, Tina something, had also been on a jury? She hadn’t been a foreperson or anything, either, just a common juror-like they wanted Adelaide to be-and now she was dead. Adelaide shivered. Tina something hadn’t exactly died a pleasant kind of death.

  A turning car’s headlights momentarily played down the block and the lengthened shadow of whoever was behind Adelaide almost reached the point where she might have glimpsed it in the corner of her vision. Then the street was dark again.

  Damn it! If she’d landed the part in Onion she surely could have gotten out of jury duty, or at least had it postponed. She would have had to rehearse-the court would have understood that the play depended on her. That would have been enough to be excused from sitting in a stifling courtroom, listening to something that was bound to be unpleasant; enough to be excused from being afraid until Mr. Justice Killer was killed or captured.

  One thing the experts seemed to agree on: the killer had widened his pool of potential victims. Adelaide knew she might be right at the edge of that pool, and she didn’t want to so much as dip a cute and dainty toe in it.

  The slight scuffing sound of footsteps behind her drew closer, and she sensed a presence very near. Not breaking stride, she saw a moving shadow merge with her own, almost completely devouring it.

  “You shouldn’t be out walking alone at night in this neighborhood, sweetheart. You want some company?”

  Adelaide stopped and stood still, then turned and faced a large, bearded man wearing a dark turtleneck sweater and jeans. His beard was jet black and trimmed so it came to a point. He was carrying a white plastic bag by its loops, and the way the plastic was stretched indicated there was something heavy inside.

  When he saw her face, his eyes changed in the way she expected. He gave her a smile surely meant to be disarming. “You are every kind of cute. I said-”

  “Back off, asshole!” Adelaide told him.

  He backed away a step, the smile freeze-framed in his beard, then spun on his heel and jogged across the street.

  “You don’t know what you�
��re missing!” he yelled from the opposite sidewalk.

  Adelaide didn’t bother to answer. More important matters occupied her mind. She wasn’t going to serve a single day of jury duty. First thing tomorrow she’d phone Barry. First thing!

  She dug a pen out of her purse and wrote a little reminder on her left palm, as she often did: Call Barry.

  Adelaide had an idea.

  29

  St. Louis, 1989

  “I’m exhausted,” April said, in the middle of putting away the groceries.

  Justice wasn’t surprised. April spent her days exhausted. Part of the reason was the depression, and part of it was the prescription medicine she was shoveling down. It seemed the proper cocktail of medications couldn’t be found to bring her relief. She’d tried doctor after doctor. She was seeing a psychologist regularly now for analysis, and a psychiatrist who prescribed medicines. The one thing the medicines seemed to have in common was that they sapped her of energy. April slept around most of the clock, and seldom left the house. She’d accompanied him to the supermarket this time only so she could choose some of what she wanted to eat, in an effort to improve her appetite.

  They could no longer afford to dine out, and they were living in a gray-shingled, rundown rental house in the wrong end of town. April’s surroundings were hardly calculated to help her escape the depression that held her in a vise, but then neither was their dwindling bank account.

  Justice opened the refrigerator and began putting perishables away. “Do you want me to fix you something to eat?”

  April shook her head no. “I’m gonna take a pill.”

  Justice felt his stomach tighten. To April, taking a pill was synonymous with taking a nap. Unless she took wrong combinations or dosages, which happened frequently. Then she’d be manically active, desperate, and heart-breaking.

  She’d once described her depression as falling down a slippery dark well that got more and more narrow and constricting. And as you fell, you knew with increasing certainty that you would never be able to climb back up to the light that now you could no longer even see.