by John Lutz
And they hadn’t delved deeply or soon enough into suspects who might have duplicated keys to the murder apartments. The decorators obviously regarded their specialists, people like Romulus, as unlike the other tradesmen they employed, and above suspicion because they were fellow artists.
“We should have figured it out,” Pearl said.
“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Unless the name Romulus is on this guy’s birth certificate, we’re going to find out who he really is, and what might have made him do what he did.”
“And who Cara is.”
“Was,” Quinn corrected, recalling the information in Nester Brothers’ crinkled brown envelope.
Pearl had gone over to the window near the body and was looking down at the street. “Everybody’s gathering down there. More cruisers, unmarkeds, media wolves. And I think I see Renz. There’s somebody down there that might even be Egan. Can’t be sure, though. One asshole looks pretty much like another from this height.”
Quinn grinned at her, loving her just then the way maybe Jubal Day loved Claire. A couple of actors, not acting.
“Bring ’em on,” he said.
74
Two days later, Quinn learned what Pearl had whispered in Egan’s ear that day at the hospital, what had infuriated Egan so and made him back away from his threat.
Using the hard drive Pearl had given her, Michelle had matched the incriminating e-mails and Web site visits on Quinn’s NYPD computer with days, and even times, when police records showed Quinn was somewhere else.
Someone had learned Quinn’s password—easy enough to do with a glance over Quinn’s shoulder when he was signing on—and had used Quinn’s computer.
Of course Michelle was implicated in stealing the computer’s hard drive, and the actual crime had been committed by Pearl. But if Egan wanted to charge either of them, they could take him down with them. They could take him down even further than they’d fall.
Egan had no bargaining chips and knew it. The only way he could prevent the hard-drive information from being made public was if he revealed who’d really raped Anna Caruso, which would clear Quinn. Mercer, the actual rapist, had duplicated the scar on Quinn’s forearm and made sure Anna saw it. And he’d stolen a button from Quinn’s shirt in Quinn’s locker and left it at the scene of the rape. Mercer would try to implicate Egan. But without the hard drive, there was no solid evidence that Egan was involved.
The purpose of the rape was to get rid of Quinn and stop an internal affairs investigation into a narcotics kickback scheme involving Egan, Mercer, and half a dozen other cops.
That investigation would become active again, and the chips would fall wherever.
What Egan would have to do even before that happened, if he wasn’t fired, was resign from the NYPD with his skin intact but not his reputation.
He was, in short, where Quinn used to be.
Well, maybe in a worse place.
Anna Caruso made a public apology to Quinn, who was reinstated in the NYPD. There were photographs in all the papers of them hugging each other while NYPD brass smilingly looked on.
Only the day before, Anna had thrown away in a storm sewer her father’s gun she’d used to shoot at Quinn on First Avenue. The night he’d chased her on foot and almost caught her before his heart acted up.
Anna decided life was a series of near misses, and sometimes hits, and the thing to do was to forget about them and live on.
And play music.
Dr. Jeri Janess was gratified to be making progress with her new patient. He’d come to her and confessed what was plaguing him: his drug addiction and increasing desire to enter into sadistic relationships with willing participants. As was inevitable, the victimization of his subjects was working its internal destruction in him. He sought now to escape his compulsion, and had come to Dr. Janess for help. So much confidence was he placing in the doctor that he’d finally offered up his real name: Lars Svenson.
After Svenson had left her office, the doctor leaned back in her desk chair and couldn’t resist a satisfied smile. She switched on her recorder to make a brief oral summation, as she always did immediately following an appointment. She recited the patient’s name and the date, then heard the hope in her voice as she said, “We’re getting somewhere….”
May Quinn married Elliott Franzine in a small, private ceremony in a seaside chapel on the California coast. Quinn didn’t know whether he should send a wedding gift. Pearl told him only if it might explode.
They settled on a silver serving platter. Quinn received a polite thank-you note, and a month later a note from Lauri complaining that “Elliott” was seriously dorky and way too strict.
Quinn decided May’s new marriage was going better than he’d expected.
Quinn and Pearl worked smoothly in the NYPD for a while, then they broke the rules again and moved in with each other.
The Village apartment they rented needed painting, but instead of hiring someone they decided to do the work themselves.
Jubal Day didn’t get the West Side Buddies sitcom role. And after As Thy Love Thyself’s run in Chicago, the roles he landed came further and further apart.
“It’ll get better,” Claire would assure him. “Something always comes along. Some perfect part, or one that doesn’t seem perfect but turns out to be. You know how this business is.”
Jubal did know, and knowing didn’t help.
His days grew longer, and so did his black moods and frustrations.
On nights when the baby let them sleep, and the only sound was the high breeze down the avenue playing at the windows, he would lie in bed desperately missing Dalia, finding his life more and more intolerable. With misery came sleeplessness and contemplation.
It was odd the way people thought, the way destiny directed their minds and lives. They assumed they had free will, but sometimes they didn’t. They were simply rushed along by fate, making up their minds the only way they could, helpless even though they sensed what was happening.
That was how Jubal felt, moved by dark powers he couldn’t understand, much less escape. If this was true evil, it was irresistible, and indistinguishable from fairness, from what he deserved. It masqueraded as hope. That was why it would win in the end.
He couldn’t help thinking back on what happened the night he returned to New York unexpectedly to smooth over the necklace situation with Claire. When he opened his apartment door, it was as if he found yet another door. Whether he opened that door was now his choice. It was a choice he was terrified to make, though he knew that on a certain level he’d already made it. In something like this, there were really no surprises.
So, here he lay beside Claire, wondering if the baby he didn’t want would again begin to bawl, missing Dalia, missing the life he’d envisioned for himself. Trapped like so many poor fools. Resigned like most of them. Thinking the forbidden thoughts.
Suppose there’d been no necklace, and no Jubal Day or Arnold Wolfe on the passenger list of the late-night flight from Chicago. Suppose he’d flown to New York under an assumed name, using identification he could buy at half a dozen places in Times Square or the Village. Suppose he’d arranged for an alibi in Chicago with Dalia. She’d swear to anything for him, for the two of them to be together. Suppose he’d been in his apartment for what the police had first assumed.
Suppose…
One intolerable gray morning, when Claire unfolded the stroller and left the apartment to take the brat for a walk in the park before it started to rain, Jubal phoned Dalia.
The moment she heard his voice, she realized she’d been expecting his call, and knew what he was going to suggest.
Don’t miss John Lutz’s next spine-tingling thriller
starring homicide detective Frank Quinn…
URGE TO KILL
Coming from Pinnacle in October 2009!
Praise for John Lutz
“Lutz can deliver a hard-boiled P.I. novel or a bloody thriller with equal ease…. The ingenuity of the plot show
s that Lutz is in rare form.”
—The New York Times Book Review on Chill of Night
“Lutz keeps the suspense high and populates his story with a collection of unique characters…an ideal beach read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Chill of Night
“John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”
—Harlan Coben
“John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”
—Ridley Pearson
“A major talent.”
—John Lescroart
“I’ve been a fan for years.”
—T. Jefferson Parker
“John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”
—Tony Hillerman
“Lutz ranks with such vintage masters of big-city murder as Lawrence Block and the late Ed McBain.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Lutz is among the best.”
—San Diego Union
“Some writers just have a flair for imaginative suspense, and we all should be glad that John Lutz is one of them. The Night Spider features elegant writing enveloping exotic murder and solid police work…. A truly superb example of the ‘new breed’ of mystery thrillers.”
—Jeremiah Healy
“Lutz juggles multiple storylines with such mastery that it’s easy to see how he won so many mystery awards. Darker Than Night is a can’t-put-it-down thriller, beautifully paced and executed, with enough twists and turns to keep it from ever getting too predictable.”
—reviewingtheevidence.com
“Readers will believe that they just stepped off a tilt-a-whirl after reading this action-packed police procedural…John Lutz places Serpico in a serial killer venue with his blue knights still after him.”
—The Midwest Book Review on Darker Than Night
“John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror…. [He]propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”
—Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale) on The Night Spider
“Compelling…a gritty psychological thriller…Lutz’s details concerning police procedure, firefighting techniques, and FDNY policy ring true, and his clever use of flashbacks draws the reader deep into the killer’s troubled psyche.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Night Watcher
“John Lutz is the new Lawrence Sanders. The Night Watcher is a very smooth and civilized novel about a very uncivilized snuff artist, told with passion, wit, carnality, and relentless vigor. I loved it.”
—Ed Gorman in Mystery Scene
“A gripping thriller…extremely taut scenes, great descriptions, nicely depicted supporting players…Lutz is good with characterization.”
—reviewingtheevidence.com on The Night Watcher
“For a good scare and a well-paced story, Lutz delivers.”
—San Antonio Express News
“Lutz knows how to seize and hold the reader’s imagination.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“SWF Seeks Same is a complex, riveting, and chilling portrayal of urban terror, as well as a wonderful novel of New York City. Echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, but this one’s scarier because it could happen.”
—Jonathan Kellerman
“A psychological thriller that few readers will be able to put down.”
—Publishers Weekly on SWF Seeks Same
“Lutz is a fine craftsman.”
—Booklist on The Ex
“Tense and relentless.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Torch
“The author has the ability to capture his readers with fear, and has compiled a myriad of frightful chapters that captures and holds until the final sentence.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune on Bonegrinder
“Likable protagonists in a complex thriller.”
—Booklist on Final Seconds
“Lutz is rapidly bleeding critics dry of superlatives.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar and two Shamuses.”
—Publishers Weekly
ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ
Chill of Night
Fear the Night
Darker Than Night
The Night Spider
The Night Watcher
The Night Caller
Final Seconds (with David August)
The Ex
Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and
Pinnacle Books
In for the Kill
JOHN LUTZ
www.kensingtonbooks.com
At the cross, her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother, weeping,
Where he hung, the dying Lord.
—Anonymous
A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.
—Coleridge, The Three Graves
If I were hung on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine.
—Kipling, Mother O’Mine
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
1
Did she suspect?
Have even an inkling?
He wondered about that as he watched the woman stride along the sidewalk, then shift her purse slightly on her hip as she turned and took the three concrete steps leading to the vestibule of her apartment building. She seemed tired this evening, as if something weighed on her, some of the bounce gone from her step.
No surprise there, he thought. Surely there’s something in us that lets us know within minutes, at least seconds, when the world is about to end.
Up? Down? Stop? Go?
The elevator couldn’t seem to make up its mind.
Janice Queen stood alone in its claustrophobic confines and felt her heart hammer. Not that this vertical indecision was anything new to her. There was only one elevator in her apartment building, and only one way to get to her unit if she didn’t want to trudge up six flights of stairs, so it wasn’t as if she had much choice. But she’d always had a fear of being confined in close p
laces, elevators in particular. She could never escape the grim knowledge that if there were a serious malfunction—nothing that hadn’t happened before to someone—beneath the thin floor under her feet was a black shaft that would lead to sudden and almost certain death.
At least two times a day, at least five days a week, she rode the elevator up or down the core of the old but recently refurbished apartment building.
Ah! Finally the elevator settled down, having more or less leveled itself at the sixth floor. When the door slid open, it revealed a step up of about four inches, enough to trip over if you didn’t notice, and to provide a glimpse into the black abyss. A kind of warning.
Janice was living her life contentedly, going back and forth to her job at the bookshop, going out on the occasional date, or to hang out with friends at Bocco’s down the block, or to pick up some takeout at the corner deli. Hers was a life like millions of others in the city.