Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  She wants to define the past.

  But he knew he wasn’t being fair. Anne lived a life much different from his. She moved in a different daily world with different priorities. It wasn’t a trivial thing, being sued for professional incompetence.

  He listened to the front door open and close.

  Knew she was locking it behind her. He at least imagined he could hear the snick of the dead bolt as she stood outside and turned her key. Locking something out, or in?

  Security. At least the illusion of it. That’s about all you get in this world.

  Horn fell back asleep, into dark dreams he knew were waiting. Intermission was over. Back to the nightly horror movie. Latest installment. Made for TV. Ratings. The whole thing was being fueled by ratings. Something blacker than night stirred, then turned toward him. Nina Count was waiting for him in his dreams.

  Can you promise me that, Horn?

  The Night Spider closed the door and locked it. He was inside his apartment. Safe. No one could stare at him here. No one could wonder about him, or somehow know he was the one. Marked like Cain . . . marked like Cain . . .

  Their eyes couldn’t find him here. He was safe.

  But he knew he wasn’t safe. And he knew pieces of his soul were being bitten off and spat out for public spectacle. Another evening of broadcast insult and humiliation. Questions—no, statements!—about his sanity and sexuality.

  He emptied the contents of a large shopping bag onto the carpet, then sat cross-legged before them on the floor.

  There was no point in wasting time. There was every reason not to waste time.

  And every reason to be careful and daring.

  He used his thumbnail to slit cellophane, open packages. Then he studied what was spread out before him on the carpet.

  Everything was here. Time to set to work. His time. His time was coming.

  He threaded the needle on the first try. He unwound about a yard of slender, strong thread from its spool. By a thread. . . Her life hanging by a thread. . . He began to sew, his fingers moving with incredible dexterity and precision, faster and faster, never missing a stitch. His unblinking gaze was fixed on his task. He moved to the rhythm of his breathing, the rhythm of his own dark cosmos. Bony breast rising and falling . . . a soft hissing, like a bellows fanning flame. By a thread . . .

  32

  It would be tonight.

  The weather report promised cloud cover and a sliver of moon. The Night Spider’s plans had been laid, the enemy measured. The resignation at last induced by constant fear. Soon would come the stupor of the prey in the grasp of the predator. The prey was waiting, afraid and impatient, secretly wishing to be possessed at last.

  And he knew she was waiting for him, growing restless in her anticipation. They cooperated with him toward the end, in their surrender. He knew by their eyes. Sometimes they grew eager. Death was magnetic.

  After double-checking to make sure he was fully prepared, he slipped into a light silk windbreaker, dark like his slacks.

  Cap pulled down, collar up. Ready. He opened the door and went out into the night, part of the night. Hell on the hunt.

  For the first time in weeks he felt wonderful!

  “Maybe he’s got this figured,” Paula said. “Maybe he’s too smart for us this time and won’t show. If he wants to, he can just sit back and let Nina crow.”

  Horn had expressed the same doubts that afternoon to Marla. Her confidence had remained unshaken.

  “He can’t stay away from her much longer,” he said now to Paula, echoing Maria’s words. “He’s trying to outwait us, lull us into complacency so he can take advantage of our carelessness. He’ll show. If we’re patient, he’ll cooperate. He has no choice.”

  Paula wasn’t so sure. But Horn was the boss.

  This time she was glad she wasn’t in charge.

  She went to her station on the apartment building’s roof, out of sight just inside the slanted and slightly opened service door. When she positioned herself just so, she had an unobstructed view of most of the roof ‘s dark expanse.

  Getting as comfortable as possible, she settled down with her steel thermos full of coffee, her twelve-gauge shotgun, and her fear.

  She found herself thinking about Harry Linnert, then tried not to.

  A cop’s life. What am I doing here? Why me? How the hell did it happen?

  A surflike rush of breeze flowed across the roof, warm as the night. Paula felt a bead of perspiration trickle down the side of her neck. She sighed and rested her hand closer to the gun.

  Horn did his nightly inspection before settling down in his unmarked parked across the street, from which he directed the operation. Everyone was in place: undercover cops on the street, observers and sharpshooters on surrounding buildings, more undercover cops posing as building employees or tenants.

  If the Night Spider appeared on the roof of Nina’s building, they would know. When he did his spider’s drop toward her window, he’d be observed every inch of the way. Gun sights would be trained on him in case anything went wrong. There was no way he could get close to Nina Count. But if he did, there was a cop in her apartment as a last line of defense, a borrowed SWAT martial arts expert who, on signal, would move into Nina’s bedroom and be waiting for whatever came through the window, while other cops closed in on the apartment fast.

  Horn leaned back against the car’s soft cloth upholstery. From where he was parked, he had a clear view of Nina’s apartment building.

  He couldn’t help a slight amount of complacency. Inevitably in situations like this, it edged in. Repetition was to blame. And this was another night exactly like the ones before. It was doubtful anything would occur. But he hadn’t let down his guard or weakened his defenses. The same precautions were in place tonight that had been here on the first night of the operation.

  He tucked in his chin to speak into his two-way. “We’re up and running.”

  Everyone acknowledged they’d heard.

  Horn had the car’s windows down, so he lit a cigar and smoked it, using his cupped hand to conceal the glowing ember whenever he raised it above dashboard level. He was satisfied that Nina was safe.

  Safe as anyone in her position could be.

  Newsy, set up with his cameraman behind the window of the building across the street, waited and watched and smoked a filtered Camel. Like Horn, he had his hand cupped to conceal the glow of the ember.

  He couldn’t help staring across the street at the face of Nina’s building as its lighted windows went dark one by one.

  At 11:45 P.M., which was her usual bedtime, just after the news starring Nina, her own window went dark.

  Newsy stepped back and to the side so he could light another cigarette off the one he’d smoked to a stub. His palms were moist. He wasn’t sure how he should feel or even how he did feel.

  He wanted something to happen.

  He was terrified that it might.

  33

  The Benadryl hadn’t worked tonight. Nina wondered if she might be building up a resistance.

  Several hours ago she’d finally drifted into restless half sleep and fragmented dreams. Then she’d come fully awake, wishing it were morning.

  It was 3:03 A.M., according to the clock by the bed.

  She lay in the dimness and listened to the muted sounds of the city late at night. New York might never sleep, but tonight it was doing a better job than Nina at skirting sleep’s edges. Right now there was only the distant whisper of traffic, barely audible, almost like a faraway ocean that occasionally surged closer, then withdrew. Life and time, coming almost within reach.

  Her pulse seemed to throb too strongly throughout her body. She could almost hear her blood coursing through her veins, could hear it pounding in her ears. The blue hammer, doctors called the pulse. Pounding madly on its muted anvil. The lump in her stomach took on weight.

  Fear was a curious thing when it never went away, when it made its home in you. It might always be there, but you
never got used to it. Not completely. It would lie almost dormant, then grab you from the inside when you least expected it, almost as if it had a sadistic sense of humor that was a reflection of your own.

  A car horn honked blocks away outside, startling her. But only momentarily. Now she felt reassured. At least somebody was out there going about normal activities. On the way to see a lover, to go home from a night job, to burgle a business, to—

  She told herself to go back to sleep, she was safe. Horn knew his business, and there were cops all over the place outside and in the building. Even that cute one, Detective Lyons, in her living room, almost right outside her bedroom door.

  Staring up at the shadowed ceiling, Nina smiled. Maybe she could invite Lyons into her room and engage him in conversation. Maybe—

  A slight sound close by, from a direction she couldn’t determine, made her heart leap. This wasn’t like the car horn, obviously far away.

  At first she lay breathless, unmoving. Then she snaked out a long pale arm, opened the nightstand drawer, and withdrew the small, nickel-plated handgun Newsy had given her. It was surprisingly cool and heavy in her hand. Horn hadn’t wanted her to have a gun. He was afraid the wrong party might accidentally be shot.

  Well, fuck Horn! Especially now! She thumbed off the gun’s safety.

  Then her addled mind regained some function: Lyons! Lyons right in the next room, just on the other side of the door! In a situation like this, she was supposed to summon Lyons!

  She tried to call out to him but made no sound. Terror was a steel claw at her throat. She could barely move. Nina never dreamed it would be this bad, that she’d be paralyzed like this.

  Her hand trembling, she held the gun beneath the white top sheet, her finger curled around the trigger.

  Her eyes strained to peer through the dimness at the rectangle of paler night that was her bedroom window.

  She heard the soft rush of the bedroom door scraping on the carpet, opening behind her.

  Lyons on the job! Thank God!

  Nina tried to tell him she’d heard a sound, but she could only emit a strangled squeak. She chanced turning her head a fraction, looking away from the window.

  Not Lyons in the doorway! Not Lyons!

  A dark figure as tall as Lyons but thinner and more angular.

  More nimble.

  Quicker.

  Before she could move an inch, before she could inhale to scream, it had crossed the room and was on her.

  On the living room floor, Lyons felt warmth and wetness beneath him and knew this was serious, he was bleeding badly. He was on his back, his hands at his sides.

  If he could only reach the gun in his shoulder holster . . . fire a shot . . . let them know . . .

  Slowly and laboriously, with all the effort he could muster, he raised his lower arm, then his elbow, and felt for the gun in its leather holster.

  Not there. . . Maybe to the left. . . there. . .

  His fingertips moved exploringly on the coarse nap of the carpet and he knew his arm hadn’t risen at all.

  A burning sensation at his throat, and he was having difficulty breathing.

  He was inhaling but he wasn’t breathing.

  The knowledge struck him with cold, numbing immensity. The recollection of his surprise, his throat being slit.

  He wasn’t breathing!

  The dimness grew darker until it became blackness and silence.

  He died gazing at Nina Count’s open bedroom door.

  34

  Nina writhed and bucked beneath the taut sheet but could barely move. The Night Spider was straddling her, his knee on one side of her, his foot on the other. One of his hands was at her throat, cutting off breath and sound. She tried to adjust her right hand, with the gun in it, so the barrel was aimed at her attacker. She was sure he wasn’t aware that she had the gun. At the cold core of her panic, she knew the gun was her one slim chance for life.

  Quickly, roughly, a broad rectangle of duct tape was slapped over her mouth, then made tighter so her front teeth bit painfully into her lips. The powerful hand came away from her throat. Salt taste. Blood in her mouth. She managed to swallow it.

  She could breathe now. Instinctively she tried to scream. The muffled moan she emitted devasted her. It was as if the silence of death already had her. Soon would come the agony.

  Her assailant’s eyes were dark and wide, and fixed on hers. Something about them. They seemed to draw from her, to drain all her energy and will to resist. Their whites gleamed in the dimness of her bedroom, making the irises seem all the blacker. She could make out nothing of his features other than his eyes, and she couldn’t look away from the eternity of darkness behind them.

  Inside the tight sheet that he was now tucking beneath her left side, preparing to begin the winding, her right forefinger was still curled around the gun’s trigger. She straightened the rest of her fingers so her hand was cupped over the small pistol, smoothing its contours so it might not be noticeable.

  But she knew the barrel was pointing straight down along her right leg. If she squeezed the trigger, the bullet would probably carve a furrow in her thigh and strike nothing else. She desperately needed to shift the weight that bore down on her, pinning her to the mattress. Her legs were encased in material he was skillfully drawing tighter.

  She had to find the leverage she needed. If only she could lift her knees slightly!

  Nina gathered all that was left of her stubborn desire to survive, all her physical strength, and dug her heels into the mattress. She strained to raise her hips so she could drop them suddenly and draw up her legs, which were bound together so firmly.

  She moaned with effort and the thing that had come for her life stopped his tucking and winding and looked down at her, cocking its head to one side. She was up to something and he was curious.

  Nina moaned again, almost getting her buttocks off the bed. And suddenly it struck her: He must wonder if I’m actually trying to help him tuck the sheet tight beneath me!

  She caught the gleam of white teeth in the darkness.

  He’s smiling! He’s enjoying this!

  His weight shifted and he rose a few inches. He leaned his strong, spindly body back so she could do whatever she was attempting in her desperate, futile struggle.

  He’s helping me!

  And holding out hope! He doesn’t want me to give up just yet! Wants me to struggle harder! To almost make it! Starting his game!

  Back and forth, life and death . . .

  Toying with me!

  Nina managed to bend her legs at the knees the thirty degrees or so she thought she needed, then lowered them abruptly and created slack in the sheet.

  Enough to adjust her hand and elevate the gun barrel half an inch.

  Maybe enough of an angle!. . .

  She squeezed the trigger.

  The gun roared, and she felt a burning sensation along her right thigh.

  He was off her and poised by the bed even before the sound of the shot stopped reverberating. She could hear his breathing, rapid, ragged, oddly inhuman. He was hissing in the silence left by the gunshot. There was more rage and malevolence in that hissing than she had ever heard.

  He tensed his body to spring at her.

  Movement! Shouting!

  From the living room!

  Just outside my door!

  The Night Spider leaped not toward Nina but toward the window. He unlocked and raised it in one smooth, unbelievably quick motion. It was as if time sped up and swept him along. Quick as a thought, he was through the window and outside, dragging a hand and affixing something to the sill on his way out.

  Horn’s cigar had gone out and he didn’t bother to relight it. His mouth was dry and with the stale taste of too much tobacco and coffee, and he’d almost dozed off behind the steering wheel of his parked car. Not that there wasn’t enough activity to merit his attention. On a busy Manhattan street like this one, even at this late hour, there was occasional pedestrian and vehicul
ar traffic.

  Then he’d seen an undercover cop named Givers leap to his feet from where he’d been pretending to sleep as a homeless man in a doorway and race into Nina’s apartment building.

  As Horn was climbing out of the unmarked, he heard “Shot fired!” on his two-way and started to run across the street. He almost slipped and fell in front of a cab letting out a woman in front of the building. She was bent over wrestling packages from the backseat, and looked sideways at him with surprise and concern as he regained his balance and raced past her.

  Givers was stepping into the elevator when Horn burst into the lobby. He saw Horn and held the door open for him.

  “You hear the shots?” Horn asked, as they ascended toward Nina’s floor.

  “Yes, sir. Just one shot.”

  “Sound like it coulda come from inside the apartment?”

  Givers gave it some thought before answering. “It coulda, yeah.”

  When the elevator door glided open, Horn was first out into the hall. A uniformed cop and Bickerstaff were already at Nina’s door. Bickerstaff was kicking at the door with the sole of his shoe. Several other doors were open, tenants craning their necks to peer out. A couple of men in pajamas and an older guy in Jockey shorts and a sleeveless undershirt were standing outside their doors. The one in Jockey shorts had mussed gray hair that stood up like a rooster comb. His grizzled chin was thrust out, his fists propped on his hips. Whatever was going down, he was game for it.

  “Back inside!” Horn shouted, waving his shield over his head. “Everybody back inside now!”

  There were a few defiant and resentful looks, but everyone obeyed. The guy with the rooster comb was last in.

  Bickerstaff had given up on kicking and was lunging at the door over and over, slamming into it with his shoulder. Horn saw that the door was open about three inches. Its latch was sprung and its lock ripped from the wooden frame, but something was stopping it from opening farther. Movement on the left. Paula came chugging down the hall, breathing hard after taking the fire stairs.