Chill of Night n-6

by John Lutz

  “I got in easily to see you,” Beam said.

  Dudman gave him a smug look, then pressed a button behind his desk.

  A door opened on Beam’s left. A large man in a dark suit stepped into the office. He had a buzz cut but with a thatch of longer, gray-shot black hair in front, no nonsense brown eyes, a nose that had been broken a few times, and a balanced way of standing suggesting that despite his bulk he could be lightning in any direction.

  “This is Chris Talbotson of Talbotson Security,” Dudman said. “He’s modest, so I’ll tell you he’s a former martial arts champion and Navy Seal, a decorated veteran. His two brothers are almost as qualified, as are all Talbotson employees.”

  Beam nodded at Talbotson. “I’ve heard of your firm. It’s a good one.”

  Talbotson didn’t smile, but said, “Thank you. Fifteen minutes after your phone call, we had you researched and entered in our data banks, sir. We have tape of you entering the building. Your identification was verified before you left the elevator. And I’ve been observing and listening to the conversation since you arrived.”

  “Impressive,” Beam admitted. He looked at Dudman. “What about your family?”

  “If I had one,” Dudman said, “I’d be terrified for them. It didn’t escape me that the late Tina Flitt was the wife of a jury foreman.”

  “There’s no one?”

  “A sister in England. Married to a poet, would you believe it?”

  Beam smiled. “She should be safe, then. And the Justice Killer will likely confine his activities to New York. Of course, there’s no guarantee. This killer doesn’t necessarily run true to form.”

  “I think we’re well prepared for anything he might attempt,” Talbotson said.

  Dudman looked at Beam as if to say, There! See! “I appreciate your concern, Detective Beam, but I do feel that all necessary precautions have been taken.” He shifted his weight in his chair, not standing, but clearly signaling that Beam’s time would be more productively spent elsewhere.

  Beam remained seated. “Why did you find Aimes innocent?”

  Dudman looked as if he might make a tent of his fingers, then laced them together and squeezed hard enough to whiten his knuckles. “Reasonable doubt. We were pledged to follow the letter of the law.”

  “Was it the letter of the law that got Aimes off?”

  “Of course. Most of us thought he killed Genelle Dixon, but we weren’t absolutely sure. Believe me, we didn’t like him. And we didn’t like what we felt compelled to do.”

  “All of you?”

  “As a matter of record, yes. As foreperson, and considering the gravity of what we were deliberating, I felt it incumbent upon us to talk everything out until our verdict was unanimous.”

  “Spreading around the guilt?”

  “That was an unkind thing to say, Detective Beam, but accurate. Only it was more like spreading around the remorse we knew would follow. But perhaps less remorse than if it turned out we’d convicted an innocent man. It does happen.”

  “Just often enough,” Beam admitted. He stood up from the chair, which hissed its relief and regret, and offered his hand across the desk.

  Dudman stood and shook hands. “I hope you never get in the position we on the jury were in,” he said. “Are you going to interview the other jurors?”

  “Yes. You were the first.”

  “They must be very afraid. Give them my best. Tell them…”

  Beam waited. Dudman hadn’t released his hand.

  “Tell them I still think we did the right thing,” Dudman said.

  “Right thing?”

  “Only thing.” Dudman released Beam’s hand but remained standing. “Chris’ll walk you out.”

  When Beam and Chris were at the office door, Dudman said, “You do understand, don’t you, Detective Beam?”

  “I do,” Beam assured him. “I’ve had to do the only thing a few times myself.”

  Dudman seemed relieved as he sat down and the two much larger men left his office.

  Chris rode the elevator down with Beam and walked with him through the lobby and out to the sunny sidewalk. Beam considered warning him about the Justice Killer’s cold-bloodedness and capabilities, then decided it wasn’t necessary. Talbotson, like Beam, was a professional. He might know more about cold-blooded killers than Beam, even if they weren’t the serial kind.

  “Take care of yourself and Dudman,” he said, shaking hands with Chris.

  He thought Talbotson would assure him he would. Instead the younger man surprised him by saying, “I’ve published a few poems myself.”

  Beam almost told him that was about the only way to get them published, then decided Talbotson wouldn’t think it was funny. He was nothing if not the serious type. “What about?”

  “The things I’ve seen, what people can do to each other.”

  “Good poems, I’ll bet,” Beam said, and patted the man’s bulky shoulder as they parted.

  Back by his car, he unfolded the sheet of paper he’d brought and checked the other Aimes trial jurors’ last known addresses. His plan had been to save time and work his way uptown. Right now he was south. Not far from the Village.

  From Nola Lima.

  What people can do to each other.

  34

  “Cool enough for you?” he asked.

  “For now,” Nell said. She took a sip of cold Budweiser from the can. Terry Adams, the air-conditioner repairman, had finally gotten back to her on her cell phone number, and told her he could work her into his schedule. The problem was it had to be this afternoon. Could Nell have the super let him in? He understood why she wouldn’t want somebody she’d never met left alone in her apartment to repair her air conditioner. Could she get a friend or relative to be there while he worked? Maybe the super would stay. Terry wouldn’t be insulted, he said; he didn’t want to be responsible if, after he left, something seemed to be broken or missing.

  Nell didn’t have a friend or relative who’d sit in her sweltering apartment and watch this guy work. And her building’s super wasn’t even on the premises most of the time. She’d been considering reporting him to Missing Persons. She was driving when she got Terry’s call, on her way to interview another of the Palmetto case jurors. She really didn’t want to go. The juror would be like the last three, deficient in any fresh knowledge of the Justice Killer investigation, and already sufficiently frightened by what they did know. If JK’s goal was to scare hell out of the city, he was doing a good job.

  “I’ll meet you there in half an hour and let you in,” she said to Terry.

  “That’ll work. I’ll probably need only a couple of hours at most.”

  So here sat Nell on her living room sofa, observing her window air conditioner being operated on instead of pursuing a serial killer.

  Terry had the unit on a blue tarp he’d spread on the floor so as not to dirty the carpet. He wasn’t the repairman of TV sitcoms, overweight with low-slung work pants. He was slim and muscular, wearing a tight black T-shirt, jeans and moccasins. His hair was a curly brown and slightly mussed above a high forehead and symmetrical features. He had brown eyes with laugh crinkles at their corners, and was clean shaven, with a chiseled jaw and cleft chin. Quite the package. It figured he was an actor as well as an air conditioner repairman-or was it the other way around?

  She’d given him a can of beer, too, and watched as he put down a crescent wrench for a moment and took a sip, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Nell found herself wishing she were wearing something other than her shapeless blue skirt and blazer and thick-soled black cop shoes. She knew she had nicely turned ankles, but not in these clod-hoppers.

  She scooted to the corner of the sofa, so she could see over Terry’s shoulder, and crossed her legs. “How’s it look?”

  He didn’t glance back at her. The hair at the nape of his neck was curling and wet with perspiration in a way she liked. She was sweating herself.

  “Not bad,” he said, exchanging beer can
for wrench. “This brass tube”-he tapped a curved, rusty tube with the wrench-“is leaking coolant, needs to be replaced. You got a couple of leaky connections, too.”

  “I didn’t notice anything dripping.”

  “The coolant evaporated before it ran over. But your filter needs changing. Condensation was building in your drip pan and running down the outside of the building.”

  “Sounds serious.” Nell had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

  He turned and smiled at her. The way his lips curled made him look kind of sardonic, like a fifties movie matinee idol who could rape his way through a movie and everybody liked it. “It isn’t. I’ll only be here about an hour.”

  He’d set up a paint-splattered old box fan he no doubt used to cool himself on the job, but he’d angled it to blow not on him but on Nell. It hummed steadily, with a faint clinking sound, sending a slight breeze over her.

  “Want me to turn that to a higher speed?” he asked, pointing at the fan with his wrench.

  “It’s fine the way it is, thanks. Are you really an actor?”

  “Don’t I seem like one?”

  “You seem like a man who knows a lot about air conditioners.”

  Again the smile. Right at her heart. “Got you fooled.” He bent back to his task, gave the wrench a turn, and removed the rusty curved piece of brass tubing. “I’ve been in some plays, done a few commercials. Way I met cops, I co-starred a couple of years ago in Safe and Loft.”

  “I remember it. Didn’t see it, though. It was on Broadway.”

  “Well, close to Broadway. It was a genuine hit, though. Ran for over a year. I played a cop, and I did my research by riding in radio cars with some of the cops in the Two-Oh Precinct. I learned about folks like you, and about breaking and entering, too. The professional burglars. I was a cop in the play, but I was also the stand-in for the actor who played the burglar. I take my research seriously, so I got to be pretty good with a lock pick. Got to know a lot of cops, and made contacts for my sideline, which is repairing household appliances.”

  “That’s how I got your name. You must do a lot of work for cops.”

  “Yeah. This time of year, mostly air conditioners.”

  “Maybe you should join the NYPD,” Nell said.

  “I thought about it.” He sounded serious. “But after getting a taste of the job, I realized how difficult it is. And dangerous. Theater critics are tough, but none of them has ever taken a shot at me.” He stopped work for a few seconds and gave her an appraising look that raised goose bumps on her arms. “I appreciate what you do.”

  Could you ever, Nell found herself thinking. “Acting’s gotta be hard on the ego, though, right? I mean, the competition must be tremendous. There aren’t millions of kids all over the world dreaming of being cops the way they dream of being movie stars.”

  “I work,” Terry said, “even if I have to repair appliances between what I consider my real occupation. Yeah, it’s a struggle, and you get kicked in the teeth regularly, but then, every now and then, you know it’s worth it. Probably not so unlike being a cop.”

  “I don’t recall ever getting any applause for being a cop,” Nell said. “Not the way you must have.”

  He laughed. “I got some at that. Hated to turn in the uniform when the show closed.”

  He tightened some joints with the wrench, then let it clatter back into his toolbox and withdrew a small acetylene torch. “Gotta heat something up,” he said, “do some soldering. Then I’ll recharge the unit, change the filter, and be out of here. I’ll be able to make an audition, and you can return to chasing the bad guys.”

  “No rush,” Nell said. “At the moment, no bad guys close enough to chase.”

  He gave her a sideways glance as the torch popped and its nozzle emitted a narrow, hot flame. Another grin came her way. Then he adjusted the blue flame and began soldering. “Your name, Nell, is it short for Nelly?”

  “It is, but nobody’s called me Nelly in years.” She waited for him to comment that it was a nice name, but he didn’t. The only sound was the humming and clinking of the old box fan, the hissing of the torch. The torch reminded her of the one the Tavern on the Green waiter had used to scorch the creme brulee, which brought to mind a comparison between Jack Selig and Terry Adams. Nell wasn’t sure she was ready for a sixtyish lover. It might be too much like being in her sixties herself, rushing the season. Selig was certainly sophisticated and handsome-and rich. Terry was certainly sensual and handsome-and still relatively poor. Maybe Terry was Selig twenty years ago.

  Nell was Nell now, and now wasn’t twenty years ago.

  Terry had finished with the blow torch and was fitting a new filter into place. When he straightened up, he wiped his hands on the outer thighs of his Levi’s so they’d be dry, getting ready to hoist the air conditioner back into the window frame. He was going to get away.

  Unless Nell’s refrigerator needed repair. It didn’t seem to be keeping the milk as cold as it used to.

  She watched silently as he slid the heavy unit back into the window, muscles flexing in his corded arms. He began to anchor it to the frame with a screwdriver.

  “Aren’t you going to try it first?” she asked.

  “It’ll work,” he said. “I knew exactly what it needed.”

  When he was finished, he switched the air conditioner on and turned it to high. It ran quietly and more powerfully than it ever had. Nell could see the brass pull chain on the nearby table lamp swaying in the artificial breeze.

  Terry unplugged the old box fan and wound the cord. Then he replaced his tools in their box, and carefully refolded the tarp so nothing would get on the carpet. He stooped gracefully for his Budweiser can, which he’d placed on his clipboard, tilted back his head, and finished his beer.

  “Mind if I wash my hands?” he asked.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall, first door on your right.”

  He placed the empty beer can on the smoothly running air conditioner, then made his way past her and down the hall. Nell knew he’d see her makeup, her toothbrush, intimate things. Maybe he’d sneak a look in the medicine cabinet and see the Midol. Maybe he’d look in the bottom vanity drawer and see her hair drier and her vibrator.

  Can’t get much more intimate than that.

  For some reason, she didn’t care.

  “I bet you made a good cop,” she said, when he returned with freshly scrubbed, almost clean hands. “Got great reviews.”

  “They said I was convincing.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You should catch me when I perform sometime.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He crossed the room and picked up his clipboard and toolbox. Then he tucked the folded tarp beneath his arm. With his free hand, he picked up the box fan. Fully laden, he glanced at the empty beer can, then at her.

  “I’ll get it later,” she said. “Want me to write you a check?”

  “Not necessary. I’ll bill you.”

  He started toward the door, then turned as if he’d forgotten something. But he didn’t look anywhere other than at Nell. She hadn’t risen from the sofa.

  “Anything else you need?” he asked.

  “Need? Maybe the refrigerator. You do refrigerators?”

  “I do whatever needs doing.”

  “Mine’s been heating up lately.”

  “Your refrigerator?”

  “No”

  He carefully placed the fan, his toolbox, tarp, and clipboard on the floor and moved toward her.

  “Everything in the damned place is overheated,” she said. “I guess I need a Mr. Fixit.”

  He sat down next to her on the sofa.

  “We’ll fix that.”

  35

  Beam parked his Lincoln in a patch of shade across the street from Things Past. The space was available because it was a loading zone, complete with signs that threatened potential parkers with everything from arrest to castration. Nola knew the car and sooner or later would see
it out the shop’s window. He didn’t care if she knew he was there. Maybe she’d think he was harassing her, and she’d come outside and walk over and complain. He wouldn’t mind; he wanted very much to have any kind of communication with her.

  Christ! I am harassing her. Just like one of those stalkers women phone the police about.

  There was always the possibility Nola would call the police, and they’d send a car to investigate her complaint. That would be, among other things, embarrassing.

  And there was always the possibility that she’d simply ignore him.

  Beam’s injured leg was starting to ache and stiffen up from sitting in one position for so long. It didn’t do that often; maybe it was trying to tell him something.

  He propped the NYPD placard on the dashboard where it was visible, then he opened the door and used it to brace himself as he climbed out of the Lincoln. After waiting for a string of cars to pass, he crossed the street to the antique shop. He’d been parked there for twenty minutes and hadn’t seen anyone come or go. Does she ever sell anything?

  By the time he’d crossed the street, he was no longer limping. The warm sun felt good on his back and leg. At the shop’s door, with its OPEN sign dangling crookedly in its window, he hesitated.

  Then he remembered what Cassie had told him: “…she needs to forgive you.”

  He wasn’t sure precisely why his sister had come to that conclusion, but she was right enough often enough to give him confidence now. He opened the door and went inside. The muted little bell above his head sounded the customer alarm.

  He seemed to be the only one in the shop.

  Finally, alerted by the bell, Nola came in through an open door behind the counter. Her hair was pulled back, emphasizing her wide cheekbones and large dark eyes. The simple blue dress she had on wasn’t meant to be sexy, but on her it was. Something about the way her body moved beneath the loosely draped material, what was and wasn’t apparent. She was a woman with a subtle rhythm all her own. The thing about women that attracted and seduced was individual and rhythmic, Beam thought. Maybe it was a subtle synthesis of rhythms. He didn’t understand it, but he sensed it was true.