Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  “Never,” he said. He wished it would stop raining. Wet weather always made his right shoulder and arm ache. He bit into his turkey club: lots of mayonnaise, crispy bacon, not so much lettuce the thing resembled a salad. It was actually past lunchtime, quarter after two, and he was the only customer. Marla leaned back with her fanny against the table across from his, half sitting, not in a hurry to leave.

  “You grumpy today?” she asked, as if it were a serious question.

  “A little, I guess. Did I ever tell you about the lawsuit against the hospital where my wife works? Names her as a defendant?” This is why I came here. To confide. To reach out.

  “Never did,” she said.

  So he told her. She didn’t interrupt him with questions, simply stood staring at the floor and listening. Had she listened to her patients that way, with that same intent but neutral expression?

  When he was finished explaining, he brought her up to date. “Anne found out this morning the Vine family turned down the hospital’s latest settlement offer. She thinks they want to go to court no matter what and try to ruin the hospital and ruin her. For revenge.”

  Marla crossed her arms and thought for a moment. “She might be right. You have to remember, they think she’s responsible.”

  “I don’t see how they could really believe that. They must have seen the medical reports.”

  “Probably think they’ve been doctored, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Horn finished the first triangular quarter of his sandwich. “Yeah, could be. They’re not exactly full of trust at this point, and I guess I can’t blame them. Four-year-old kid in a coma he might not come out of. That’s a damned hard thing.”

  “So revenge isn’t out of the question, right?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the psychologist.”

  “You’re a cop. Cops know people as well as any psychologist.”

  “Was a cop.”

  “Was a psychologist.”

  He laughed and sipped his Diet Pepsi.

  “Let’s get to your problems,” she said. “Any developments in the Night Spider case other than the new victim I read about in the papers? Neva? . . . ”

  “Taylor.”

  “Was she killed like the others?”

  “With only the minor variation you’d expect. There isn’t any doubt it’s the work of the Night Spider.”

  “What about a copycat?”

  “Not likely. He wouldn’t know enough about the murder scenes from the news reports to recreate one so faithfully. But why do you ask about a copycat? Does the psychoanalyst in you sense something?”

  She smiled. “It’s the waitress in me asking the questions, Horn. What’s the police profiler tell you?”

  “Exactly what you’d think. The killer’s between twenty and forty-five years old, organized, intelligent, hates women and probably his mother, and stalks his victims before killing them. Yearns for fame and anonymity simultaneously. A sadist who relishes what he’s doing even though he’s driven to it and knows it might destroy him eventually.”

  “You buy into all that?”

  “Only some of it.”

  “Good.”

  “This the psychoanalyst talking now?”

  “Yes. And a woman who lives alone. I’d like to see this dangerous sociopath caught.”

  “We’ve got a fresh list of suspects, some of them in the New York area. Detectives are checking the names now.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because we have enough cops on the case to check on and interview suspects in and around New York City.” A lie, but she couldn’t know for sure.

  “No, I meant here. The diner.”

  “I don’t know. Not for sure. Do you?” He smiled when he asked, signaling to her that he might have been joking.

  Might have been.

  Marla drew a deep breath, then sighed and straightened up from where she’d been leaning back against the table. “Think it’ll ever stop raining?”

  28

  The windshield wipers made a regular, rhythmic thumping sound that would have reminded Paula of sex if she’d let it. She sat in the unmarked and peered through the fogged-up windshield at the West Village building where the next to last name on her list, a former SSF trooper named Harold Linnert, resided. According to the list given to Horn by Kray, Linnert was fifteen months out of the army, single, and thirty-seven years old.

  He lived in a brownstone that reminded Paula a little of Horn’s, only it wasn’t as well kept. The red front door needed paint and the geraniums in the window boxes were dead, though live ferns hung down in long green tendrils that directed twisting rivulets of rainwater. On the foundation wall behind a row of blue plastic trash cans was some elaborate but indecipherable graffiti sprayed on with faded black paint.

  When she’d left the car and reached the brownstone’s stoop, Paula saw that the building had been made into a duplex. H. Linnert was on the second floor. Paula pushed the buzzer button and stood waiting beneath her umbrella, watching rainwater run from it and puddle on the concrete near a rubber doormat.

  A tinny voice from the intercom said something she couldn’t understand. She identified herself as the police, playing by the rules.

  A buzzer like a Louisiana locust grated and she pushed open the door.

  A small foyer with a door to the left, steep wooden stairs straight ahead. The walls in the foyer and stairwell were a glossy green enamel that could be wiped down. The dampness made them smell as if they’d just been painted. Music was on too loud in one of the units, a Gershwin show tune Paula couldn’t place.

  She closed her umbrella and trudged up the steps, listening to them creak. No sneaking up on Mr. Linnert. Gershwin had been playing in the downstairs unit and faded to silence halfway up the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs, a handsome man with mussed black hair stood waiting for her. He was wearing pleated brown pants and a gray T-shirt. Even standing still he projected a kind of effortless grace, as if he’d just completed a dance step and was poised for another. Paula thought if he had a physical flaw it was that his ears stuck out too far. He had lots of muscle, a waist smaller than hers, and he was smiling.

  “I’ll take that,” he said.

  At first she didn’t understand what he meant. Then she handed him her wet and folded umbrella. He stepped aside and let her in, placing the umbrella in a stand made from an old metal milk can. He moved with easy precision. Not a drop from the umbrella got on the waxed hardwood floor.

  The living room she found herself in was orderly and surprisingly well furnished. Lots of prints—in the sofa, chairs, wallpaper, even lampshades. Here and there were solid-colored red and gray throw pillows. A blue carpet was a shade darker than the walls. It all went together.

  “Very nice,” Paula heard herself say admiringly. “Obviously you have a good decorator.”

  “My sister. She watches all those decorator shows on cable and practices on my place. I wouldn’t give up my dogs playing poker, though.” He motioned with his head to his left.

  My God, there they were! Hanging near the door to a hall Paula saw the same hideous print of dogs seated around a table and playing poker that had hung in the home of one of her uncles in Louisiana.

  Linnert limped past her, surprising her with his uneven yet still graceful gait, and motioned for her to sit down on the sofa. She did, finding it as comfortable as it appeared. She noticed a fireplace with artificial gas logs burning in it. What a wonderful place to spend a rainy afternoon.

  He offered her a cup of hot chocolate, which she made herself refuse. What am I doing, having a cozy confab in a place like this with a handsome bachelor? Is this really my job? She found herself looking around again at the apartment. Place is like a damned trap.

  Linnert sat down in a chair near the sofa. She noticed how blue his eyes were. Shooter’s eyes. He said, “You mentioned questions.”

  “Did I?” Dumb thing to say. Maybe I did.

  “Over
the intercom.”

  “Oh. Yes.” This guy had her flustered for some reason— she knew the reason—and she didn’t like it.

  She gathered her wits and explained to him why she was there, not mentioning, of course, how she’d gotten the information about the Secret Special Forces. Horn had told them Kray was probably risking his career to help them catch this killer.

  Harold Linnert leaned back and crossed his legs, then folded his muscular tanned arms across his chest. “A part of my life that’s over,” he said.

  “What do you do now?”

  “I’m an architect. An apartment I lease across the hall is my office.”

  “Skyscrapers?”

  He grinned. “Not hardly. I mostly tell people how to reroute plumbing, or which walls they can tear down without the building collapsing around them.”

  “You good at your work?” Stupid, stupid question!

  “Nothing’s collapsed yet.”

  “About that other part of your life . . . ”

  “I suppose you’re checking out everyone in my old unit.”

  “Yes. Routine.”

  “Oh, sure. May I ask why?”

  “We’d rather not say right now.”

  “Uh-huh. I was positive you were going to say you were touching all the bases.”

  Paula felt like telling him she didn’t have time to play dueling clichés. “I’m interested in your whereabouts on these particular evenings,” she said, making her tone official, as if she’d never had an impure thought in her life. She read off the dates of the Night Spider murders.

  “On one of those nights I was at the Bas Mitzvah of a friend’s daughter, all afternoon and most of the evening. The other nights I’d have to check on.” He uncrossed his legs. “But I might be able to save you some trouble. May I show you something?”

  “Of course.”

  He bent forward and pulled up his left pants leg to reveal a nasty, barely healed jagged scar running down the inside of his knee. Stitch marks were still visible. “From radical knee surgery. My surgeon will tell you this scar is from the third of three operations over the past year, the last one about a month ago. I can’t put my full weight on this knee, run or take stairs fast, or climb. Haven’t been able to for months.”

  Paula sized up the operation scar. It appeared to be as serious as claimed. She couldn’t imagine anyone scaling buildings or hand-walking across ropes or cables with such an injury. “An old war wound acting up?”

  “Rugby injury. I was playing in a league. Stepped on a tent peg somebody had driven into the practice field in the park, and forgot when they broke camp. I wrenched my knee and messed it up permanently. Dumb thing to do.”

  “Forgetting a tent peg?”

  “No. Tripping over one.”

  Paula lowered her notepad and pencil to her lap and looked at him.

  He gave her his handsome white grin set off by tanned features. “If you don’t believe me, you can talk to my surgeon at Kincaid Memorial Hospital. He’ll verify what I’ve said, tell you it was a classic tent-peg injury. He might even attest to my good character, as I’ve paid him what I owe.”

  “You know I will talk to him.”

  “Of course.” He braced himself with a hand on one of the chair arms, then stood up with some difficulty. Paula watched as he limped to an antique kneehole desk and wrote something on a white card. His business card, which he handed to her before sitting back down. Paula thought the limp looked genuine enough.

  So did the business card, with the address of the apartment across the hall. On the back he’d written the name of a doctor at Kincaid Memorial.

  Paula slipped the card into her purse next to her gun. “I do have a few questions about your SSF unit,” she said. “Nothing that would cause you to reveal any state secrets.”

  The tooth-whitener-commercial smile again. “I don’t know many of those. Our operations were always narrowly defined.”

  “What did you think of your commander, Colonel Gray?”

  “Kray. With a K. Hell of a soldier.” Blue eyes hard now. Something wild and willful in them. “I’d disagree with anyone who said otherwise.”

  “Nobody has so far,” Paula told him, thinking he might be a dangerous man in a serious disagreement. “Kray seems to have had the respect of his men.”

  “He earned it.”

  Paula glanced down at the notepad and papers in her lap. “I have another name on my list, without an address. Maybe you can help me with it. Aaron Mandle.”

  Linnert sat back and looked . . . Paula wasn’t sure of his expression, but it certainly made his blue eyes darker.

  “I couldn’t tell you where to find Mandle,” he said. “Haven’t thought of him in a long while.”

  “So maybe you can tell me something about him. Anything that might help me locate him.”

  “He was a peculiar guy. But then we all were, I guess. It takes a certain type, in that kind of unit.” He looked at her and seemed to be considering what he’d just said. “But Mandle was an oddball even in our outfit. Damned good soldier. Knew how to . . . Knew his work and did it well. I guess you know we were primarily a mountain combat unit. Climbing was almost as important as fighting, and we moved every which way on mountainsides—or, for that matter, on building faces in urban settings—as if we were born to it. In a way, you had to be. It’s gotta run in your blood. Mandle always removed his right boot and sock before an operation that entailed climbing. He climbed barefoot, and better than any of us. Had this weird extra-long big toe that allowed him to gain grip and leverage.”

  Paula remained outwardly calm. “Barefoot, huh?”

  “Just one foot. He’d sit down on the ground and whip off that right boot and sock, stuff the sock down in the boot, then sling the boot from his belt by its laces. Carry it that way all through whatever happened next.”

  Paula was having a hard time breathing. “He ever explain the freaky toe?”

  “Nope. Wouldn’t talk about it. But he could extend that toe out to the side, almost like a thumb; he really knew how to use it. Used that foot like a hand, if he had to.”

  “Odd, all right.”

  “You sure you don’t want a cup of hot chocolate? Detective . . . Paula?”

  “Paula,” she confirmed. “Paula Ramboquette.”

  “French. Cajun. Ah, that explains your accent!”

  “Cajun,” she confirmed. “And thanks anyway but no to the hot chocolate. Listen, Mr. Linnert—”

  “Harry.”

  “Harry, was there anything else peculiar about Aaron Mandle?”

  “Well, he wasn’t easy to talk to. Kept his thoughts to himself. A loner, I guess you’d call him. But when it came to teamwork, he was there. There was no other way. We had to trust each other.”

  “Male bonding.”

  Linnert nodded somberly. “You can joke about it, Paula, but it kept us alive. The ones of us that stayed alive.”

  “I wasn’t joking,” she assured him sincerely. Why am I so damned concerned if I hurt his feelings? Why am I so . . . what?

  She stood up. She knew she’d better get out of there or she’d be curled up on the sofa and sipping hot chocolate before she knew what happened.

  “Thanks for your time and cooperation, Mr. Linnert— Harry.”

  “Want me to phone my surgeon and tell him you’ll be coming by? Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.”

  “No, no. I’ll take care of it. I won’t have to know any details about the injury. Just his general opinion on how it would incapacitate you. You’ve been helpful.”

  “Have I?”

  “Well, maybe. We never know for sure until later.” Horn’s line. She moved toward the door and Linnert stood up. Too fast. So smooth.

  She felt a mild jolt of alarm.

  But he was smiling and merely escorting her to the door. He opened it for her and stood at an angle to let her pass. She felt uneasy with him so close and wasn’t sure why.

  “I wouldn’t mind being in
terrogated by you again,” he said.

  “Harry—Mr. Linnert. I appreciate the sentiment, but this isn’t the time for it.”

  “Oh, probably not. Would you leave me your phone number. In case I remember something important?”

  She had to grin. “I’m with the NYPD, if you need me.”

  “And I might need you.”

  “Harry, Harry . . .”

  “Okay, Paula. I give up for now.” He shifted position a bit so she’d have more room to get by, giving off a faint cologne scent. She liked it, which surprised her after spending months cooped up in the car with Bickerstaff and his bargain-basement odor.

  She stepped past Linnert onto the landing.

  “One more thing I recall,” he said. “About Mandle. It was strange. There were these big karakurt spiders where we were in Afghanistan, kind of like black widows only larger. They were poisonous, but Mandle didn’t mind handling them. And when they stung him, it didn’t seem to affect him.”

  “Strange, all right,” Paula agreed.

  She thanked Linnert again for his cooperation.

  He didn’t shut the door. Instead, he stood leaning against the door frame so he could watch her leave. She knew he wanted to keep her in sight as long as possible.

  As she took the stairs to the foyer and street door, trying not to run, she was trembling and was afraid Linnert might notice and misunderstand.

  So uncontrollable was the trembling that she fumbled for and almost dropped her cell phone even before she got across the street to where the unmarked was parked. She collected her thoughts and climbed into the car before trying to use the phone.

  Once seated behind the steering wheel in the fogged sanctuary of the vehicle, she was calmer. As she pecked out Horn’s phone number, a lock of wet hair dropped over one eye, momentarily blocking her vision before she brushed it back with her free hand. She realized she was soaked. She’d forgotten her umbrella.

  Damn it! She knew Harry Linnert would think she’d done so on purpose.

  While the phone chirped on the other end of the connection, she wondered if he might be right.