by John Lutz
“You’re talking about the madness I’m trying to stop,” she said. She put down the empty pitcher on the glass-topped table next to the fern. The plant still didn’t look well, the tips of its fronds curled and tinged with brown.
“I’m talking about you risking your life.”
“Everyone does that, every day. It’s just that they don’t always know it.”
“Everyone doesn’t play target for a killer,” he said, pacing silently in the moccasins. “I thought you were really leaving the city, like they said on the news. I came by to see if you wanted to go with me to Cozumel. The airlines have a great special fare.”
“There’s always a special fare to Cozumel.”
“I have a friend there who owns and operates a parasail business.”
“Those things scare the holy hell out of me.”
He stood still and held his palm to his forehead, had to laugh. “And you’re not afraid of this? This thing you’re doing?”
“Sure, I’m afraid. Like anybody who wants to continue breathing.”
“Then why do it?”
“It’s my job, Terry. I thought you understood.”
“I try to understand, Nell. Honestly.” He came to her and held her, kissed the top of her head. “I’ve found you. I don’t want to lose you. That’s what I’m afraid of. Simple as that.”
“I’ll have plenty of police protection.” She extricated herself from his grasp and explained the details of the plan, how an army of uniformed and undercover cops would be stationed around her no matter where she went; how the Justice Killer preferred murder at close quarters, which would allow time for her protectors to move in, or for SWAT snipers to stop him from a distance with well placed shots.
Terry seemed unconvinced. “Your police protection won’t be any closer to you than I’ll be.”
“No, Terry, that’d make him less likely to try for me. Or maybe he’d decide to kill us both. If we forced him to do that, he might think he has to do it from farther away, or maybe use some kind of MO he hasn’t yet tried. This sicko likes to experiment. We think he’s coming apart, that we have him on greased skids, and we don’t want to slow him down till he hits bottom.”
“If he’s so unpredictable, why won’t he decide to shoot you from a distance? Or plant a bomb in your apartment?”
“Even though he’s varying his methods, we think he’ll continue trying to kill close-up.”
“But why?”
“He’s enjoying it more and more. And even if he doesn’t know it, he’s a creature of compulsion.”
“Oh, Christ! Who’s doing all this psychoanalysis? Is it Beam? Is that what Beam thinks?”
“It’s what we all think. Especially Helen Iman.”
“Who is?”
“Police profiler.”
“Good Lord! What can a profiler understand? It isn’t like movies or TV, Nell. I know, I’ve done both. Every real cop I ever met thought profiling was a lot of crap.”
“You haven’t met them all, then.”
“And now I’ve met one who’s betting her life on profiling.”
“It’s more than that. It’s what we all feel, what we know in the gut.”
“The gut’s gotten a lot of cops killed.”
“You don’t know that, Terry. You’re talking bullshit. You’ve only ridden with cops for a while, and played a cop onstage.”
“And slept with a cop.”
“Well…that, too.”
He paced around again for a few seconds, then faced her. “You’re pissed at me for caring so much about you.”
“Whatever the reason, I’m getting pissed.”
What’s with you, Terry? Why is this more difficult than it should be?
“I’ll stay here with you tonight, Nell.”
Tempting, tempting… “No, you have to leave and stay away. Until this is over.”
“You’re asking a lot of me.”
“Don’t think I don’t know it.” She placed her hands on his chest and kissed him lightly on the lips. “It won’t be long, darling.” Try a little tenderness.
He held her close, almost tight enough to hurt her.
When he released her, she saw the stress on his features, the now familiar vertical tracks above the bridge of his nose that told her he was thinking hard, agonizing.
Then she saw resignation.
A tenseness seemed to leave him all at once, changing the energy of his body though he hadn’t moved a muscle.
“You’re right,” he said. “But even if you were wrong, it’d be your decision. I’m not going to oppose you on this, Nell. If I have to accept it, I will. I love you that much.”
They kissed. Nell didn’t want him to release her this time, ever; but when he did, the resolve in her tightened.
“Will you change your mind about tonight?” he asked.
“No. You have to go, Terry. And stay away for a while. I don’t like that part of it, but it has to be that way.”
“I suppose it does, if your mind’s made up as only you can make up a mind. Did the police see me come in?”
“They saw you come in,” Nell said, walking to the door and standing by it. “And now they’ll see you go out.”
As he left, he said glumly, “I think your fern is dead.”
Terry had been gone less than an hour when Nell’s cell phone chirped.
She went to where it was lying on the desk next to her purse, then picked it up gingerly and saw by the caller ID that it was Jack Selig.
The musical chirping persisted.
She laid the phone back down and didn’t answer.
Beam sat in a battered white Chrysler minivan half a block down from Nell’s apartment. The van had been confiscated in a Brooklyn drug raid last month and pressed into service by Narcotics. It had been used by the bad guys as a portable crystal meth lab, and there was still a faint chemical scent to its interior.
The evening was finally beginning to cool, so Beam had the engine and air conditioner off and the windows down. A pleasant breeze was moving through the van’s interior. Traffic swished and honked in the background. Music was playing somewhere, wafting through the lowering dusk, a bastardized Beatles tune he couldn’t place though it was hauntingly redolent of his past. Beam knew it was all deceptively reassuring. Mucking around in one’s own contentment often ended badly.
But he couldn’t help being somewhat reassured. They were as ready as they could be, for now. It would take a few days, and nights, to get Nell’s protective net perfect, but he’d see that it became perfect. He could have stopped Nell from doing this-maybe he was the only one-so it was more his responsibility than anyone else’s to see that nothing bad happened to her.
The way to do that was to make sure that when she moved around the city, pretending she was leading a normal life, out of the investigation and no longer a player, she was shadowed by undercover cops. When she was in her apartment, like now, the main thing was to keep track of everyone entering or leaving the building. Everyone.
Beam knew numbers were important, but they wouldn’t get the job done by themselves. The killer might even figure out a way to use numbers against them. A lot of cops were a good thing, but they weren’t necessarily a lot of protection; they multiplied the possibility of someone being spotted or identified as police, of making a mistake.
Usually a suspect couldn’t afford even one mistake, but a mistake by the police could be rectified and might only delay the payoff. The Justice Killer had managed to reverse that dynamic, to flip the odds so they favored him. One mistake by the police, and Nell would be dead. And the stalker was choosing time and place, biding his time for a sure kill. He could wait. Numbers were no match for patience.
The patience of a hunter.
70
Like she hadn’t a care.
Justice watched Nell stroll down the street toward a knot of people waiting to cross at the intersection, then stand on the fringes of the group. She was wearing Levi’s, sandals, a gray golf
shirt, and had her hair tucked under a blue Yankees cap. And she was carrying what looked like one of those collapsible two-wheeled wire carts many New Yorkers used to transport light loads such as clothes or groceries.
She’s looking kind of yummy today, in those tight jeans.
Not that it matters.
West-and east-bound traffic squealed and rumbled to a halt, except for vehicles making right turns. The backup of people building at the intersection broke from the curb and began to cross. Some hurried, glancing warily from side to side, while others walked slowly and seemed casually unaware of traffic. Nell was a typical New Yorker and crossed briskly, her head up, her gaze shifting for oncoming traffic or other urban dangers.
For the urban danger standing unseen across the street, watching her.
Justice smiled. He wasn’t at all surprised that Nell hadn’t gone to Los Angeles to visit friends, as the media reported. That had been a cover story floated by the police. She remained in the city, where Justice, unfooled, was supposed to discover her. A trap.
Unfooled and unfooled.
He stopped near a window display of electronics and observed the reflection of the street behind him.
There went Nell, into a D’Agostino’s grocery store.
Justice studied the moving, reflected scene made vivid by bright sunlight. Who was the young tourist type, complete with jeans and backpack, who’d been walking behind Nell but now slowed down and moved back against a wall, then ostensibly began searching for something in his pockets? He finally found a map, unfolded it, and began to study it.
Did he glance at the casually dressed couple-the man with a camera slung on a strap around his neck-as they entered D’Agostino’s? Did they glance back?
A green Ford Taurus slowed, stopped, then parked in a miraculously available space near the grocery store. It contained only the driver, and he didn’t get out.
The police had quite an operation going. They were covering Nell very efficiently. Justice approved.
Fifteen minutes later, Nell emerged from the store with her wire cart unfolded and loaded with two tan plastic bags stuffed with groceries. The green of celery tops or leaf lettuce protruded from the top bag. There was a six-pack of something beneath the bottom one. Looked like Diet Pepsi. Justice was learning more and more about Nell.
She pushed rather than pulled the cart as she walked back the way she’d come. As it passed over seams in the sidewalk, the flimsy little cart bounced, and Nell had to use both hands to control it.
The young tourist with the backpack folded his map and stuffed it back in his hip pocket, then continued his stroll. The car whose driver had never gotten out pulled away from the curb. The middle-aged couple with the camera came out of D’Agostino’s. Nothing in their hands. No paper-or-plastic dilemma for them. They began strolling side by side behind the youth with the backpack, who was behind Nell.
Nell walked leisurely along the crowded sidewalk, pushing the two-wheeled cart ahead of her. It looked as if there might be a wire attached to something in her right ear. Listening to music? Well, she was supposed to be unconcerned. To have assumed that the Justice Killer had put her out of his mind, out of the game, and she was safe.
She’s turning in a pretty good performance, acting the unknowing bait. Even swishing her hips more than usual in case I might be watching. Those tight jeans are for me. That ass-
Nell stopped and raised a hand to adjust her earpiece. Probably not listening to music at all.
Justice watched her smile slightly, then bob her head as if in time to music. Nice touch.
She placed both hands on the cart again and resumed walking.
On the other side of the street, he followed.
Beam screwed the lid back on his nearly empty thermos and laid it on the seat next to him. He was parked near Nell’s apartment in the white minivan. The evening was warm, so the motor was running and the air conditioner working away. He was parked on the other side of the street, facing away from Nell’s building, but had its entrance under observation in the van’s oversized left outside mirror.
Nell should be back soon.
A siren yodeled several times a few blocks away, making Beam squirm in the van’s scuffed leather seat. The confiscated vehicle didn’t have a police radio; Beam used his two-way: “This is Beam. What was the siren?”
“Ten fifty-three on Eighth Avenue,” a voice said. Police code for a vehicle accident. Could be a simple fender bender.
More sirens. Sounded like emergency vehicles.
“Code ten forty-five,” explained the voice, before Beam could ask. An accident with injuries. An ambulance was needed.
“’Kay,” said Beam, and got off the two-way.
New York being New York, he thought. Nothing to do with Nell.
He knew that officers Havers and Broome, borrowed from an SNE, a street narcotics enforcement unit, were posing as a tourist couple with a camera, keeping a tight tail on Nell. They had two-ways and backup mobile phones and would notify Beam if anything out of the ordinary was happening.
Beam sat up straighter. There was Nell in the van mirror, pushing a wire cart along the sidewalk.
He watched as she turned around and, moving backward, pulled the overloaded cart up the three steps to her building’s foyer. The wide door, flanked by stone columns, opened, closed, and she was inside.
Safe at home.
Beam knew better, but he breathed easier.
A car’s headlights flared in the mirror and momentarily blinded him. When the lights went out, he saw that a drab brown Chevy sedan had parked behind him, a vehicle as inconspicuous as the van.
Looper, here to take over until Beam returned at midnight. Excellent. Beam couldn’t get the coffee taste from his mouth, and he had to take a piss.
He went back to the two-way: “All yours, Loop.”
“She in?”
“Tucked away and secure, probably for the evening.”
“No hot date?”
“Not unless it’s the one we’re trying to arrange.”
Beam decided to take a turn around the block before driving to his apartment, brushing his teeth, and trying to get some sleep. Looper would call him if anything developed.
He twisted the key in the ignition, and the starter grated, startling him. Jesus! He’d forgotten the van’s old engine was already running.
His back ached as he put the transmission in drive and the vehicle jerked away from the curb, leaving Looper in the parked Chevy behind. Beam realized his legs were stiff from sitting in one position for almost two hours.
He was ready to be relieved.
The changing of the guard down in the street hadn’t escaped his attention. He watched the white minivan turn the corner and disappear. From up here, the brown Chevy looked unoccupied, like any other parked car.
The police were good at their job.
Three o’clock in the morning. That would be entry time. Most of the cops he knew agreed that three a.m. was the optimum time for housebreaking if anyone was home and sleeping. That was when sleep was deepest, when dreams were firmly in charge, when things tended to happen.
He knew how to get on the roof of Nell’s building from the fire escape of the taller building beside it. The top two floors of that building were vacant and being rehabbed. He’d scouted them, gained entry, and found a sturdy two-by-eight plank, part of a painter’s scaffold, that would act as a bridge from fire escape to roof. In his dark clothing, he’d be difficult to spot from below even if someone happened to be looking directly at him. A shadow that moved. That would be him-a shadow that moved in the night.
There were ways to enter Nell’s building from the roof. And there were ways to leave, to reverse his procedure, get clear of the area, and not be seen. This was a game he understood and was good at.
While the police were watching Nell’s building, they weren’t as careful about watching this one. He’d gained entrance in late morning, made his way to the uninhabited floor where constructio
n had been halted until inspections were made and permits were issued, and made himself comfortable amid plastic paint buckets and plaster dust. Lots of plaster dust. One of his biggest problems was not to sneeze and possibly draw attention to himself.
Seated on a folded tarpaulin, his back against a sheet of wall board, he occasionally nibbled a stale sandwich and sipped warm bottled water. He waited.
Patiently.
Three o’clock. That was what most cops said. He’d even heard one say it recently on a TV cop show. Called it magic time.
Truth and fiction…Weren’t they running together these days?
Three o’clock in the morning.
When things happened.
71
Nell knew that the streets below, succumbing to the slower tempo of the night, were virtually crawling with NYPD. Beam was watching from somewhere outside, directing the operation. Uniformed cops were in the building, one stationed at the end of the hall outside her door. They came and went with some regularity. Undercovers were stationed around the block. Be they homeless, or drunken late-night revelers, or lovestruck couples strolling holding hands, they were out there, ready to become cops. A uniform was stationed in the super’s apartment, off the lobby. Looper was nearby, cruising the neighborhood in an unmarked car. They all knew who and what they were hunting. They knew the danger.
As did Nell. She kept her nine-millimeter Glock in the nightstand drawer within easy reach, a round in the chamber, safety on.
After brushing her teeth and changing into her sleep shirt, she watched the late news on TV, then checked to make sure the apartment’s door and windows were locked, the drapes closed.
Bedtime. Part of her regular life. Just like a normal person not worried about a madman bent on killing her at the earliest opportunity.
But she didn’t switch on the bedroom air conditioner. The night wasn’t so warm that she couldn’t do without it, and she didn’t want its background noise covering some other, more ominous sound.