Chill of Night n-6

by John Lutz

  She climbed into bed and read a New Yorker for a while, hoping for some help from the cartoons. But her sense of humor had deserted her.

  A crossword puzzle in this morning’s paper was a valuable distraction. It managed to frustrate her, which was better than being terrified. And when finally she did figure out a ten-letter word for hypnotized, she was tired enough to sleep.

  Deliberately keeping her movements economical and balanced, so as not to jar herself all the way awake, she put down the folded paper, then her pencil, and managed to switch off the lamp and fall back onto the bed.

  The dreams came, as she knew they would. The thin wire slicing deep into her throat, leaving her suddenly breathing blood; the silent bullet from nowhere, tumbling though her flesh, splintering bone.

  Dark dreams from the darkest corners of her soul.

  She slept with fear, but she slept.

  At two minutes after three, beneath a moonless black sky, he worked the two-by-eight board out through the kitchen window of the soon-to-be-demolished apartment and wrestled with it until it was balanced on the fire escape rail. He squeezed between board and window frame, so he was outside, then maneuvered the plank so one end was still supported on the rail, and the other on the roof parapet of the building next door-Nell’s building.

  Mustn’t waste time.

  Switching off his fear, he stood up on the plank, fixed his eyes on the tile-capped parapet across the passageway, and began to walk.

  A few seconds later, he dropped almost silently on the roof of Nell’s apartment building.

  He left the plank, knowing it was barely visible from below even if someone did happen to be in the dark passageway and glanced up.

  The service door was unlocked, open about half an inch and blocked by a bent beer can. Apparently the super or maintenance crew didn’t like the idea of possibly being stranded on the roof. Or perhaps kids playing, or lovers seeking a private, quiet place had left the door blocked. It wasn’t uncommon in New York, to neutralize the lock on a roof door.

  Odd, though, that the police hadn’t spotted it.

  He’d been prepared to pick the lock, had the equipment in his pocket. Much easier-and faster-this way.

  He opened the small, heavy door, then ducked inside and switched on his small flashlight. It had masking tape over half its lens, making its narrow yellow beam even more precise. He was on a tiny landing, with wooden stairs leading down to an access panel that provided entry into a closet he knew held cleaning supplies.

  In the closet, he had to be careful. He knew there were two plastic buckets, a mop and broom leaning against a wall, an ancient upright vacuum cleaner, cans and bottles of cleaning solvents and powders on a wire shelf. Mustn’t make noise here. There was an acrid smell in the closet, some kind of disinfectant or insecticide. Very deliberately, he slowed down, slowed everything, even his heartbeat.

  Quiet, quiet…keep movements small.

  He opened the door gradually, stuck his head out, and peered up and down the dimly lit hall. It had a tiled floor but a wide rubber runner. He could move along it silently.

  As he started to leave the storage closet, he saw motion at the far end of the hall. A uniformed cop, pacing almost lazily, pausing to gaze out a small window into the blackness of the night.

  After scratching his left ear with violence and abandon, the cop moved on toward the stairs. Another uniformed cop came along, and he heard their voices, though not what they were saying. They were obviously going down the stairs together.

  But they might not go all the way down. Or stay together. One or both might return at any moment.

  That was all right. It would take almost no time to cover the twenty feet or so to Nell’s apartment and gain entry.

  But there was risk here. Undeniably.

  His wild heartbeat was telling him that.

  If I’m going to do it, the longer I wait before moving, the greater the risk. In this goddamned world there’s risk in everything. So move! Swallow your fear and move!

  He moved.

  Nell was awake.

  She didn’t exactly remember waking up. It had been a smooth transition from sleep to consciousness, as if dimensions overlapped and a dream had somehow slipped into reality. Yet she couldn’t recall her dream.

  The clock’s red digital numbers read 3:13 a.m.

  She lay on her back, her neck muscles tense and her head barely denting her pillow. She listened.

  Listened.

  The apartment was quiet.

  She realized she was thirsty. The bedroom was sweltering and her throat was parched. Her lips felt cracked. That was what had awakened her, the thirst. She swallowed. It made a sound like tiny bones cracking.

  So thirsty.

  She rolled to her side, then sat up on the edge of the mattress. Her bare feet found the floor and she stood up.

  More tired than I thought. Dizzy.

  She licked her lips, but even her tongue felt dry.

  The bathroom, a glass of water, was only just down the hall from the bedroom.

  But the refrigerator offered filtered cold water, with ice in it.

  Definitely the kitchen.

  She padded slowly and unsteadily across the bedroom toward the dimly outlined rectangle that was the doorway to the hall, then moved on past the bathroom, toward the darkness of the living room and kitchen.

  In the van, parked near the end of Nell’s block, Beam sat hunched low behind the steering wheel. He’d returned at midnight to relieve Looper, who’d taken a break and was again cruising the side streets. Beam was in the half awake yet alert mode of a longtime cop on stakeout. Like a hybrid car running on one system independent of the other, but always a second away from switching to maximum power and the hell with economy.

  The van’s dashboard was dark except for the faint green glow of the stock radio, tuned to an all-night FM station that played show tunes. The radio was on low volume, and couldn’t be heard five feet away from the van even though the windows were down. Beam was listening-and not listening-to the orchestral score of Phantom of the Opera.

  His slitted eyes took in the dimly lit street, the parked cars, the stunted, silvered trees that bent gently in the breeze, the infrequent headlights and passing of vehicles at the intersection. And Nell’s guardian angels. The bulky bundle on one of the concrete stoops near Nell’s building was actually an armed and ready undercover cop, not a drunk or a street person. Behind the windowed double doors of a brownstone apartment building was a tested and reliable uniform named Sweeney, using the vestibule as an observation post.

  A violin solo began, rich even on the van’s economy speakers, as subdued and melancholy as the night.

  Light flared in the van’s outside mirror as a car turned the corner twenty feet behind Beam. In the brightness wrought by the headlights, Beam glanced at his watch.

  Three-fifteen a.m.

  Looper, on schedule, in his turn around the block.

  The dented brown five-year-old Chevy rolled past the van and continued down the street. Looper didn’t glance Beam’s way. Beam, barely aware of the violin, watched the Chevy’s taillights, one brighter than the other, recede down the block, then merge and disappear as the car turned the corner. Looper would park not far down the cross street, and in a few minutes would drive another slow, circuitous route along the streets surrounding Nell’s apartment.

  The violin again, rich and expressive in tone, yet not much louder than a kitten’s meow. Beam wished for dawn and a larger speaker.

  Nell pressed the water glass against the refrigerator’s ice-maker lever and cubes tumbled down into it. She switched the setting, gave the glass another shove, and purified water streamed over the cubes.

  Three cool swallows brought her almost fully awake.

  Almost.

  She noticed a dim light coming from the living room and thought immediately that she’d gone to bed and forgotten to switch off the TV. She’d done it before. And she had been watching late-night ne
ws before going to bed.

  Her fear still part of her dreams, she moved automatically into the living room, the glass in her hand.

  Took three steps, then realized her mistake.

  The light wasn’t from the TV. It was from a flashlight. Held by a dark, unmoving figure standing just inside the door.

  Nell’s harsh gasp startled even her.

  In the dimness, enough light from outside filtered in for her to recognize the man in her living room.

  72

  Rooted by astonishment and fear in the dim room, Nell said his name in a choked voice:

  “Terry.”

  “I had to see you,” he said. “I was so worried about you, Nell. Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to protect you…needed to. I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you while I was tossing and turning in my bed, close enough to help but not helping.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “I remembered some of the tricks I learned from my days riding with the police, so I knew how to get on the roof from next door. Then I came down through the service door. As for the apartment, I still have the key you gave me.”

  All the time he’d been speaking, he hadn’t moved. Her fear was like a wall between them. A wall her love was trying to climb.

  Nell wanted to believe him. Wanted to so badly. She knew he was leaving it up to her. Trust and terror. It would have to be one or the other for Nell. One direction or the other.

  More awake now than she’d ever been, her mind raced as she made the calculations, figured the gravity of her choice, and factored in the risk.

  Decision time. The edge of the blade.

  She came unstuck from her terror and indecision and ran away from Terry, toward the bedroom and her gun.

  He was moving now, too. She knew he was close behind, heard the rush of his body, could even imagine she felt the heat of his breath. The gun in the nightstand drawer. That was what she concentrated on, what meant everything to her now.

  The gun.

  “I can’t raise Garcia.”

  The voice came to Beam over his two-way, from the bundle of rags on the concrete stoop.

  Garcia was Sergeant Wayne Garcia, the uniform stationed at the end of the hall outside Nell’s apartment.

  “Sir?”

  “I heard,” Beam said. He thought for a moment. The problem was most likely simple equipment failure. He couldn’t imagine Garcia falling asleep. But there were other things he could imagine. “Let’s go see.”

  He twisted the ignition key and heard only a low groaning sound. Tried again and got only a faint series of clicks. The van’s battery was dead. It held enough juice to power the radio, but not enough to turn the starter and kick over the engine. Instead of driving down the street to the apartment building, Beam would have to walk.

  Shit happens, he thought. Especially around three in the morning.

  He got out of the van and began trudging down the eerie dark street toward Nell’s building.

  Ahead of him, the bundle of rags stirred and stood up.

  Nell made it to the bedroom ahead of Terry and slammed the door behind her.

  Almost immediately it crashed open, bouncing off the wall. Nell hadn’t stopped moving. She dived onto the bed, lunged to the far side of the mattress, and fumbled to open the nightstand drawer.

  “Nell!” he said behind her. “Listen, Nell!”

  She yanked the tiny drawer too hard and it came all the way out and fell to the floor.

  Damn it! Gun!

  She couldn’t see the gun.

  It must be down there on the floor somewhere in or around the drawer. The drawer she couldn’t reach.

  “Nell!” Terry pleaded again. He was on the bed with her, his weight bearing down hard on her upper body. Her right bicep was clamped painfully in his powerful grip. “Nell, damn it!”

  Terrified, she craned her neck to glance up at him.

  Then froze.

  Terry and Nell weren’t looking at each other.

  They were staring at the uniformed cop in Nell’s bedroom. He was holding in his right hand a gun with something bulky fitted to its barrel.

  Terry acted first.

  He rose from the bed and flung himself at the figure with the bulky handgun.

  And ran into an iron fist that struck his shoulder and staggered him.

  He knew he’d been shot.

  He took a few backward steps, still with the presence of mind to stay between the cop and Nell. The cop very deliberately edged to the side to get a better angle on his target.

  And Nell’s powerful Glock exploded the night’s silence.

  The bullet snapped past Terry’s right ear and shattered the window.

  “Get the hell outta the way, Terry!”

  A faint sound came to Beam and the raggedy cop through the night, a flat bam! that reverberated only once, almost instantaneously.

  More noise. Tinkling glass? A woman-Nell?-yelling something?

  There was no doubt about the first sound. A shot.

  Both men began to run.

  In Nell’s bedroom, Terry didn’t get out of the way. He knew he couldn’t let Nell have the shot without making her vulnerable to the cop. Keeping himself between the two, he backed to the bed, feeling his right calf contact the mattress and springs.

  He whirled and scooped a pillow backward toward the cop, seeing Nell kneeling on the side of the bed, seeing a perfectly round hole appear like a magic trick in the wall inches from her head.

  He dived across the mattress and her body folded down under him.

  Nell was trapped in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, with Terry on top of her, shielding her with his body.

  His hip was jammed against the wall, his left arm beneath Nell. She was squirming beneath him, breathing hard. Something-her fingernails?-was scraping on plaster. Pain was like a red tide assaulting his consciousness. Every muscle tightened in Terry as he waited for a second bullet to hit him.

  It did. In the back of the shoulder that was already shot.

  More pain erupted. He moaned but managed to remain conscious.

  Nell squirmed even harder beneath him, her breath hissing between clenched teeth. Finally she gained leverage and mustered enough strength that she forced him above the level of the mattress, and he saw the cop bolting from the bedroom.

  He must know the sound of Nell’s shot drew attention.

  The cop whirled, taking one more chance and trusting to luck. The gun made its muffled pop! The bullet went wild, hit the bedside lampshade, and made the lamp dance but not fall.

  Nell was sitting up now, struggling to get Terry’s weight off her so she could work herself up the wall to a standing position and give chase.

  Then she looked down at the blood on her hand holding her gun. At the blood on the wall. On her nightshirt.

  “Jesus, Terry. Is this from me or from you?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Think it’s all me. Hope…”

  “Ah, your shoulder! That bastard!”

  “Go get him, Nell.”

  “Screw him!”

  She tossed her gun aside and reached for the sheets, anything to stop the bleeding.

  They were in the lobby of Nell’s building. Beam was aware of something, a faint stirring above, as if the shot had awakened every tenant, made everyone afraid in a way that was almost palpable.

  Fear is in the building.

  “Take the stairs,” he told the bundle of rags that was a cop. “I’ll take the elevator.”

  Rags pulled a Remington shotgun from beneath his worn raincoat and dashed for the stairs. Beam heard him going up, treading light, taking two, three steps at a time. Then Beam turned back toward the elevators. He’d already pushed the up button.

  One of the elevators had descended to lobby level. The door opened, and da Vinci stepped out. He was in uniform, and holding a handgun with a sound suppressor fitted to its barrel.

  He didn’t notice Beam until he’d taken three or four
steps. Then he stopped and made a half turn back toward the elevator.

  But he was too late. The elevator door was just finishing sliding shut.

  Beam stood between da Vinci and the street door.

  Rags encountered no one on the stairs. He reached Nell’s floor and slowed down, moving carefully now.

  He edged open the door to the hall.

  There was Garcia, sitting slumped against the wall. His mouth was gaping, and his chest and stomach were black with blood. His eyes were lifeless marbles.

  Rags had gotten winded coming up the stairs. His breath seemed to him as loud as a steam engine as he stepped over Garcia’s legs and made his way down the hall toward Nell’s apartment.

  At her door, he looked up and down the hall, but saw no one. The elevator should have beaten him up here. Where the hell is Beam?

  Maybe inside.

  He tried the knob, found the door unlocked, and went in fast, shotgun at the ready.

  The living room was dim, unoccupied, but there was light down at the end of a hall.

  “Who’s out there?” a woman’s voice called.

  “Police!”

  “C’mon back here. Come back here and help, damn it!”

  Rags made his way down the hall, shotgun still raised and ready to fire.

  He was slower going into the bedroom. Faint noise from in there, familiar, like bedsprings in shifting rhythm. Someone having sex?

  Then he saw the man on the bed-looked like half his shoulder was blown away. Saw the bloody figure of Nell straddling the man, desperately using a wadded sheet in an effort to stanch the bleeding.

  Rags glanced around. Nobody in the bedroom other than him and the two bloodstained figures on the bed.

  “Goddamn do something!” Nell pleaded.

  Rags didn’t figure there was much he could do. “I’ll call 911,” he said.

  “I already did,” Nell told him. “See if you can help me stop this goddamned bleeding.”

  Down in the lobby, Beam understood it now, as he stared at da Vinci standing there in his old motorcycle cop uniform, the boots, the jacket that helped hide the bulky silencer, the cap with its eight-pointed wire frame removed, so it was worn crushed already and would fit beneath a motorcycle helmet.