Lightning

by Ed McBain

  Lightning.

  Lightning all over the newspapers again.

  A fierce gust of wind shook the branches overhead, sent leaves tumbling down in a golden shower. The leaves, driven by the wind, rasped over the path winding past the library steps. Where the hell are you? he thought. He planned to follow her only a little way back to the dorm, get her on that dark stretch of path before it opened into the quadrangle again. Dark there, perfect there. Couldn’t risk Corey McIntyre again, make it too easy for them, they’d think he was crazy. Couldn’t have the papers saying he was crazy. That was the one thing—

  One of the library doors was opening.

  Luella came out onto the wide, flat top step, her arms full of books. She looked too skinny to be carrying all those books. He felt like going up to her, asking her if she’d like some help with the books. She was adjusting a long woolen muffler around her neck now, pulling up the collar of her peacoat, skinny little girl in a big peacoat probably belonged to her brother or somebody, somebody in the family who was a sailor, you got a lot of black kids enlisting in the service these days. He tried to remember whether his research had turned up anything about her brother being a sailor? Nothing in the stories he’d read, nothing he could remember. Easy to forget things, though. Look at how easily they’d forgotten him.

  She was coming down the steps now.

  She coughed. Probably had a cold. Bad for a runner, she should be taking better care of herself, skinny little thing like that.

  She walked past the tree.

  The wind came up again.

  She hadn’t seen him.

  He waited until she was a good fifty yards ahead of him, and then he fell into step behind her. He was grateful for the rasping of the wind-driven leaves on the path; they covered any sound his track shoes made.

  “What’d she say the name of that dorm was?” Ollie asked.

  “Baxter,” Carella said.

  “So where are the names? How you supposed to know one dorm from another?”

  “She said the second dorm down.”

  “So how can you tell the difference between a dorm and any of these other buildings?”

  “I think this one is Baxter,” Carella said.

  “So where’s the quadrangle? Everything looks the same here. Fuckin’ college looks like a monastery.”

  “There it is,” Carella said. “Up ahead.”

  She was through the cloister now, unaware of his presence behind her, the leaves swirling on the path, rising on the air again in tainted tatters. Ahead of her was a section of path lighted at its eastern end by a single lamppost, dark until it opened onto the quadrangle where another lamppost stood. He knew she was fast, he would have to get to her before she bolted, he didn’t want her to get away. She was fast, yes—but he was faster. He waited until she passed beneath the lamppost, and then he broke from a standing start, his shoes pounding on the pavement, the leaves scattering as if in sudden panic. She heard him, but she was too late. As she started to turn, he pounced on her.

  The surprise was total, her eyes opening wide in shock, her jaw dropping, a scream starting somewhere in her throat—he clamped his hand over her mouth.

  She bit him.

  He pulled his hand back.

  The scream erupted, shattering the night.

  They had come through the quadrangle and were entering the path at its western end, dark beyond the lamppost, when they heard the scream. Ollie’s gun was in his hand an instant before Carella reached for his holster. Both men began running.

  Up ahead, they saw the figures struggling in the dark, the man towering over the girl, the girl kicking and punching at him as he tried to turn her back to him. The wind was stronger now, rattling the branches of the trees lining the path, blasting leaves onto the air like demons trailing fire.

  “Police!” Ollie shouted and fired over his head.

  The man turned.

  They could not see his face in the dark, they could see only the motion of his turning. Carella thought for a moment he would use the girl as a shield, holding her from behind—one of his arms was looped under hers now, his right hand clamped over the back of her neck—but instead he released her suddenly and began running.

  “The girl!” Carella said urgently, and began running after him.

  He had wanted to say, “See if the girl’s all right,” or “Take care of the girl,” but the man was off like the wind unleashing leaves everywhere on the night, and as Carella ran past the girl lying on the path now, he did not even turn to see if Ollie had understood him.

  He had not run this hard since he was a kid in high school. Track wasn’t his sport; he’d played right field on the school’s baseball team, and his serious running had been confined to chasing high flies or rounding third base on a locomotive dash for home. That had been a long time ago; only on television and in movies did cops chase all over the city trying to nail a runaway suspect.

  The man ahead of him was too fast.

  Carella fired his pistol into the darkness, and the muzzle flash and ensuing explosion—like lightning and thunder on the night—coincided with a rain as sudden as it was fierce, almost as if his squeezing the trigger had served as a release mechanism, the lever action opening a hopper somewhere above. The rain was all-consuming. It pelted the path and the trees arching overhead, combining with the wind to create a multicolored shower of water and withering leaves. He pounded through the rain and the falling leaves, gasping for breath, his heart lurching in his chest, certain he would lose Lytell—if this was Lytell—knowing the man was simply too fast for him.

  And then suddenly, up ahead, he saw Lytell lose purchase on the wet leaves underfoot, his arms flailing out for balance as his feet went out from under him. He fell to the sodden path sideways, his left shoulder hitting the asphalt, the blow of the impact softened somewhat by the covering of leaves. He was getting to his feet again when Carella ran up to him.

  “Police,” Carella said breathlessly. “Don’t move.”

  Lytell smiled.

  “What took you so long?” he said.

  It was still raining when the man from the DA’s office arrived at the 87th Precinct. He did not get there till 6:00 the next morning, by which time Ollie and Carella had already searched—armed with a magistrate’s warrant this time—Henry Lytell’s premises at 843 Holmes Street. Several articles they had found in the apartment were on the desk in Lieutenant Byrnes’s office when the assistant DA arrived. A stenographer recorded the presence of Lieutenant Byrnes, Detectives Carella and Weeks, and Assistant District Attorney Ralph Jenkins. The stenographer also recorded the date, Friday, October 21, and the time the interrogation took place, 6:05 a.m. Jenkins read Lytell his rights. Lytell said he understood them, and further stated that he did not wish his own attorney present during the questioning. Jenkins began the Q and A.

  Q: May I have your full name, please?

  A: Henry Lewis Lytell.

  Q: And your address, Mr. Ly—

  A: You probably know me as Lightning Lytell. That’s what the reporters used to call me. Back then.

  Q: Yes. Mr. Lytell, may I have your address, please?

  A: 843 Holmes Street.

  Q: Here in Isola?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: Are you employed, Mr. Lytell?

  A: Yes, sir, I am.

  Q: In what line of work?

  A: You understand, don’t you, that I’m a runner. I mean, that’s what I am. How I earn my living has nothing to do with what I really am.

  Q: How do you earn your living, Mr. Lytell?

  A: I’m a researcher.

  Q: For whom? What sort of research?

  A: A freelance researcher. For advertising agencies, writers, anybody needing information about any particular subject or subjects.

  Q: And your place of business is where?

  A: At home. I work out of my apartment.

  Q: Do you set your own hours, Mr. Lytell?

  A: Yes. That’s the only good thing a
bout the job, the freedom it gives me. To do other things. I try to run every day for at least—

  Q: Mr. Lytell, can you tell me where you were and what you were doing on the night of October sixth? That would have been a Thursday night, two weeks ago.

  A: Yes, sir. I was with a runner from Ramsey University. A girl on the track team.

  Q: Her name, please.

  A: Marcia Schaffer.

  Q: When you say you were with her…

  A: I was with her first in her apartment where I represented myself as a man named Corey McIntyre of Sports USA magazine. Then—

  Q: You told Miss Schaffer you were someone named Corey McIntyre?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: How did you come upon this name?

  A: I got it from the masthead of the magazine.

  Q: And Miss Schaffer accepted you as a person from the magazine?

  A: I had an ID card.

  Q: Where did you get an ID card?

  A: I made it. I used to work for an advertising agency. This was, oh, eight, nine years ago, after all the hullaballoo was dying down. I learned a lot in the art department, I know how to do these things.

  Q: What things?

  A: Making up a card that looks legitimate. Getting it laminated.

  Q: You were working in the art department of an advertising agency?

  A: No, no. But I knew art directors, I was always hanging around with them. I was working directly with one of the creative assistants, you see. Trying to dream up campaigns involving sports, you see. That’s why I was hired in the first place. Because of my athletic expertise.

  Q: As I understand this, then, you were working at an advertising agency some eight or nine years ago…

  A: Yes.

  Q: When did you begin doing independent research, Mr. Lytell?

  A: Three years ago.

  Q: And you’ve been so employed since?

  A: Running is what I really do.

  Q: Yes, but to earn a living…

  A: Yes, I do research work.

  Q: Getting back to the night of October sixth. You went to Miss Schaffer’s apartment and represented yourself as an employee of Sports USA—

  A: A writer-reporter for Sports USA.

  Q: A writer-reporter, yes. And then what?

  A: I told her we were preparing an article on promising young runners.

  Q: She accepted this?

  A: Well, I know all about running, that’s what I am, a runner. So naturally, I knew what I was talking about. Yes, she accepted me.

  Q: And then what?

  A: I asked her if she’d like to have dinner with me. To do the interview.

  Q: Did you, in fact, have dinner with Miss Schaffer that night?

  A: Yes. At a seafood place near her apartment. There’re lots of good restaurants in that neighborhood, we just picked one at random.

  Q: What time was this, Mr. Lytell?

  A: Early. Six o’clock, I think. Early.

  Q: You took her to dinner at six o’clock?

  A: Yes. So I could do the interview. She was very excited about the interview.

  Q: What happened then?

  A: What do you want me to say?

  Q: Whatever you wish to say. Tell me what happened after dinner.

  A: I killed her. I already told that to the detectives here.

  Q: Where did you kill her?

  A: In my apartment. I told her I wanted to continue the interview, and I suggested that we finish it over a cognac in my apartment. She said she didn’t want a cognac—she was in training, you know, runners have a very strict training regimen—but she said if I had a Coke or something, that would be fine.

  Q: What time did you get to your apartment?

  A: Seven-thirty?

  Q: And then what happened?

  A: She was—I think she was looking at a painting I have hanging in the living room, it’s a painting of a male runner—and I came up behind her and applied a full nelson. I used to do some wrestling before I got interested in track. There’s no comparison, you know. Wrestling is a sweaty form of one-on-one combat, whereas running—

  Q: You killed her by applying a full nelson?

  A: Yes. To break her neck.

  Q: At what time was this, Mr. Lytell?

  A: A little before eight, I guess.

  Q: Lieutenant Byrnes, the medical examiner’s estimate of the post mortem interval puts the time of death at approximately seven p.m., doesn’t it?

  A: (Byrnes) Yes, sir.

  Q: Mr. Lytell, what did you do then?

  A: I watched some television.

  Q: You…

  A: I wanted to wait till the streets got deserted. So I could carry her down to the car. The rope was already in the trunk, I’d put it in the trunk earlier that day.

  Q: How long did you watch television?

  A: Until about two in the morning.

  Q: Then what?

  A: I carried her down to the car. I checked the street from the window first, my living room faces the street. I didn’t see anybody around, so I carried her down, and put her in the front seat. She looked like she was sleeping. I mean, sitting there in the car.

  Q: What did you do next?

  A: I drove her up here.

  Q: By up here…

  A: The neighborhood up here.

  Q: Why up here?

  A: I didn’t pick it specifically. I was looking for a deserted place. I found this construction site with a row of abandoned buildings on the other side of the street, and I thought it would be a good place.

  Q: A good place for what?

  A: To hang her.

  Q: Why did you hang her, Mr. Lytell?

  A: It seemed a good way.

  Q: A good way?

  A: Yes.

  Q: To do what?

  A: Just a good way.

  Q: Mr. Lytell…Did you also kill a young woman named Nancy Annunziato?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: Can you give me the details of that?

  A: It was the same as the first one. I told her I was with Sports USA, I took her to dinner, I—

  Q: When was this, Mr. Lytell?

  A: On the night of October thirteenth. I met her for dinner at Marino’s, that’s a midtown restaurant, very nice. She lived all the way out in Calm’s Point, you see, she agreed to meet me at the restaurant. Eight o’clock. I made the reservation for eight o’clock. We did most of the interview during dinner, and then we went back to my apartment, same as the last one, same as the Schaffer girl. We talked some more—she was a big talker, Nancy—and then I…well…you know.

  Q: You killed her.

  A: Yes. I used a full nelson again.

  Q: What time was this?

  A: Ten-thirty, eleven.

  Q: Lieutenant Byrnes, does that jibe with the medical examiner’s estimate?

  A: (Byrnes) Yes, sir.

  Q: What did you do then, Mr. Lytell?

  A: Same as the other one. Took her down to the car, drove around looking for a deserted place to hang her. I didn’t want to do it up here again. I’d already tried to help the detectives up here—