Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  Givers and the uniform were helping Bickerstaff now, all three men hunkering down and pressing against the door and each other, trying to direct their strength and weight in one direction. A cop, a raggedy grifter, and a guy who looked like an overweight salesman, all struggling to get into the apartment. Paula, the winded college girl with the shotgun, did what she could to help.

  “Something’s up against the damned thing!” Bickerstaff said, looking over at Horn.

  “Where the fuck’s Lyons?” the uniform asked, doubling his efforts to budge the door. Each time he strained forward, his eyes bulged and his beefy face got so red he appeared ready to have a stroke.

  Horn ignored his bad right arm and joined Paula in awkwardly trying to help with the door, but there wasn’t enough room for either of them to make much difference. He knew that, viewed from a distance, there must be something tragically comedic about their struggle.

  Then the door moved an inch inward.

  Six inches.

  At last it grudgingly opened far enough to allow entry.

  Bickerstaff was first in, gun drawn. Givers and Horn followed. Horn heard Paula behind him instructing the uniform to stay in the hall.

  Horn had his service revolver out and was crouching low to make a small target as he moved to the side and tried to see in the dim living room. A heavy chair had been pushed up against the door, tilted so its back was wedged beneath the knob. Bickerstaff cursed, almost tripping over the chair.

  Horn was wondering about the answer to the uniform’s question in the hall. Where the fuck’s Lyons?

  “Shit!” Paula said. She’d stepped in something squishy and almost stumbled over Lyons’s body near the sofa. She looked down and saw that her right foot was on blood-soaked carpet. “Lyons is shot! Looks dead!”

  Horn was appalled and relieved simultaneously. One shot fired. Not into Nina.

  Then he stepped closer and looked down at Lyons, at the black formless shape that framed his body like a shadow and had leached and spread. “His throat’s been slashed.”

  “Shit!” Paula said again.

  “Bedroom!” Horn said, pointing to the hall off the living room. He led the way.

  The bedroom door was open. Horn held his breath but didn’t hesitate.

  There was a little more light in the bedroom. Nina was on the bed wrestling with the sheets, frantically trying to free herself, sit up, and rip a rectangle of tape off her face at the same time.

  “Nina!” Bickerstaff shouted, letting her know she had help, friends, she was going to be okay.

  Beyond her a shadow moved at the window, not in the room but beyond it. Outside. Horn thought it might have been an illusion, a trick of light and adrenaline.

  “The window!” Givers shouted. “He went out the goddamn window!”

  Nina was aware that the bedroom was full of dark figures darting in different directions like flitting shadows and still shouting. She heard her name. Then:

  “The window! He went out the goddamn window!”

  One of the figures was at the window, leaning outside to peer down.

  “He’s dropping like a fucking stone. If I take a shot I might hit somebody below.”

  Nina tried to get untangled from her sheets. She had to break free so she could rip the tape from her mouth and tell them his line was attached to the sill. They should cut it. Detach it. Let the bastard fall like a stone! See if he shatters like a stone.

  Horn was standing near the foot of her bed, yelling something into his two-way.

  “Blood on the sheet!” a voice not Horn’s said. “She’s hurt.”

  I’m hurt . . . I’m hurt!

  “Blood on the window frame, too,” said the figure who’d been peering down the vertical face of the building. He stared at his wet fingertips, then wiped them on his pants leg. “He’s hurt!”

  The Night Spider had been ready for anything but what happened. After the initial shock of the gunshot, he’d quickly wedged his small but sturdy grappling hook beneath the window’s marble sill and unfurled his slender polymer line down the side of the building. As soon as he was through the window and into the night, he dropped, rappeling; he almost ran down the building, controlling his rate of fall by playing line through his belayer.

  But a few yards beneath Nina Count’s window, he realized he didn’t have the strength in his left hand to break his speed as much as he wanted. He was dropping too fast.

  He squeezed harder and gained a grip on the line, finally slowing his descent but bringing pain where there had been numbness in his left shoulder.

  I’ve been hit! She shot me!

  The bitch shot me!

  Fury lent him strength. He knew he could do this now, knew he could elude his pursuers. They have no idea what they’re dealing with!

  His hyperalert senses picked up movement above. When he glanced up he saw something he didn’t understand. It was dark, jutted out from the building about two feet, and was almost the width of the building. And it was moving down the building’s face toward him like a wave descending on a vertical stone beach.

  Falling toward him faster than he could safely drop!

  Then it was on him, around him, over him, past him.

  No, not past him.

  A net! They dropped a net down the side of the building!

  His bare right foot snagged in the heavy rope net and he lost his grip on the line. Sudden drop! His knee twisted, and there was a painful wrench to his injured left shoulder.

  He found himself caught in the net, dangling upside down and pressed tightly against the stone face of the building by its weight.

  He was staring straight down. Ten stories above freedom. At least ten more stories.

  Not freedom, though. There were dozens of figures directly below now, staring up at him.

  Struggling to free himself, he was overcome by more pain. Not only his shoulder, but his knee. He refused to let them have him! Not alive! If he could manage to reach his knife . . .

  They can’t have me! They can’t!

  He raised his upper body, bent at the waist as if doing a midair sit-up, and tried to grip a cross rope of the net but fell back. Now his right arm was entangled in the net. Pain blossomed like fire in his shot shoulder and damaged knee. So much of his weight was hanging by that ruined leg! The pain made him dizzy, nauseating him. It overcame his will and defeated his strength. His hope.

  All he could do was wave his left leg freely, his left arm limp and dangling from his injured shoulder.

  He felt a warm trickle down the arm and watched blood drip from his fingertips. It twisted and plunged in a thin scarlet thread parallel to the slender line that no longer led to escape.

  At the window of the building directly across the street, Newsy Winthrop was almost jumping up and down, using all the self-control he had to keep from pounding his cameraman on the back. Mustn’t do that! Mustn’t jiggle the frame!

  “Getting it?” Newsy kept asking, staring at the Night

  Spider snagged like an insect in a net, pinned to the building by converging brilliant spotlights, dangling like the unwilling specimen of a bug collector. “Jesus! Are you friggin’ getting this?”

  “I’m getting it,” the cameraman kept answering, trying to ignore Newsy while concentrating as intently on his work as if he were alone.

  “We’re the only ones getting it, my man! The only ones who’ll have it!”

  “Take it easy, I’m getting it all. Don’t distract me, man, okay?”

  But Newsy wasn’t listening.

  He was thinking Pulitzer.

  35

  When finally he’d fallen into bed at 7:00 A.M. Horn went over it in his mind, how everything had almost gone terribly wrong.

  Almost.

  Aaron Mandle was in custody and under high-alert guard at Kincaid Memorial Hospital. The Night Spider murders had ended, finally and forever. If Nina hadn’t ignored Horn’s instructions and sneaked that gun into bed, then fired that shot . . .


  Horn tried not to think about it but his mind kept returning to the night before like a dog returning to something buried not quite deep enough.

  Mandle had almost won. He’d almost killed Nina and almost made his escape. Only the crack of the gunshot in the early morning hours had made the difference.

  The hard fact was, Mandle had outsmarted them. Lying in his hospital bed, waiting for the courts to decide his fate, he’d be thinking about that and it would mean a lot to him. He had that satisfaction, and Horn didn’t like it.

  The sick bastard had surprised them.

  * * *

  “You didn’t expect that,” Marla said the next afternoon at the Home Away.

  Bickerstaff and Paula were sitting with Horn. They were in their usual booth, drinking coffee. All three looked tired after their long night at the precinct house and only getting a few hours of restless sleep that morning. A plate containing only a pat of margarine and dusting of toasted corn muffin crumbs was in front of Horn. He’d drunk half his coffee before switching to ice water with a twist of lemon, still trying to chase the taste of last night.

  “No,” Horn said, “we didn’t expect him to go in through the door. We anticipated him lowering himself from the roof toward Nina’s window. That’s when we were going to drop the net on him.”

  “The net,” Paula said, lowering her coffee cup, “was one hell of an idea.”

  Horn had first gone to the FDNY for a net, but they didn’t have anything large or heavy enough. Instead, he got several cargo nets from a shipping company on the docks, and had them bound together to form one long, rolled net that could be dropped from the roof as soon as the Night Spider began his descent. Fortunately, the net had been large enough to reach well below Nina’s window.

  “When we removed Mandle’s jacket,” Paula said to Marla, “he was wearing what looked like a doorman’s uniform. Gold braid, epaulets, and all. Even had a pretty good representation of a doorman’s cap wadded in a pocket. Guy was a hell of a seamstress.”

  “That politically correct?” Bickerstaff asked.

  Paula frosted him with a look.

  “Mandle figured we’d expect him to drop from the roof,” Horn said, “so he got into the building sometime during the day and hid there. After he’d killed Nina, he was going to make sure there was a big hullabaloo in the building, then simply walk out. There are three regular doormen. The one on duty was replaced with an undercover cop. If he’d seen Mandle he’d have thought he was one of the regular doormen. If a regular doorman had noticed him, he’d have assumed he was an undercover cop.”

  “He only had to fool them for a minute or so,” Bickerstaff said, “then he’d have been outside, and it woulda been gone no forwarding.”

  “Think it would have worked?” Marla asked, switching the heavy glass coffeepot to her other hand.

  “He’d have made it work,” Horn said.

  “You see Nina Count’s network TV interview this morning?” Paula asked. “She had her skirt hiked way up so the bandage on her leg was visible.”

  “I doubt anyone was looking at the bandage,” Bickerstaff said. He added cream to his coffee and stirred. “What a dumb fuck Mandle turned out to be. Why didn’t he just lay off Nina and keep killing his victims at random?”

  “Ask Marla,” Horn suggested.

  Bickerstaff stared up at her expectantly.

  Instead of explaining, Marla said, “Ever do any mountain climbing, Bickerstaff?”

  “Never had the urge. Never wanted to fall a long way and get hurt or killed.”

  “You ever jaywalk?”

  “Jesus, Marla! I’m a cop!”

  “Uh-huh. Anybody want more coffee?”

  Paula came all the way awake immediately and sat up, the way it happens sometimes when you’ve slept well and late in a strange bed.

  It hadn’t taken long, she thought. Just till the night after Mandle was arrested. Technically, that might not mean the case was closed. After all, Mandle hadn’t even been arraigned yet. Still, it had been close enough. Obviously.

  Paula was in Harry Linnert’s bedroom, in Linnert’s bed. He was already up and dressed and standing at the foot of the bed with an oversized cup of hot chocolate in each hand. Paula usually drank coffee in the morning, but she could switch to chocolate. She knew a lot of her habits might change, being in love with Harry.

  “This kind of service gonna continue?” she asked, accepting one of the steaming cups.

  “Probably not,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  “You’re a depressingly honest man, Harry Linnert.”

  “Uh-huh. And look where it’s got me.”

  She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Jesus! Ten o’clock. I never sleep this late.” She climbed out of bed, careful not to spill hot chocolate. “You’re spoiling me. Ruining me.”

  “You mind?”

  “Not terribly.”

  Naked—she never slept naked—she pecked him on the cheek and padded barefoot into the living room. He’d opened the drapes. She hoped no neighbor with a telescope had been lucky enough to choose their window.

  The TV was tuned to Fox News. One of the anchormen, along with the terribly concerned anchorwoman Linda Vester and a former New York judge who’d beome something of a celebrity, were avidly discussing the Night Spider case.

  A conviction was almost a foregone conclusion, the judge barked knowledgeably. The anchorman appeared absolutely giddy as he described the tape of Mandle’s capture showing on a split screen. Gorgeous Linda Vester pursed her lips and looked unbearably pained and sympathetic toward everyone everywhere who might be suffering any sort of trouble beyond a hangnail.

  Paula became aware of Linnert standing near her, off to the side, paying no attention whatsoever to what was happening on television.

  She became suddenly ill at ease in her nakedness. She took a sip of hot chocolate. “I usually don’t sleep past eight o’clock. It’s uncoplike.”

  “You don’t have to be at work till this afternoon,” Linnert reminded her, “which makes it okay that you’re out of uniform.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So what do you want to do with the rest of the morning?”

  She placed her cup on the glass-topped coffee table and smiled as she moved toward him. “Go back to bed.” She wrapped her arms around him. Finding herself kind of hoping a neighbor with a telescope was out there.

  “This how you celebrate when a killer gets arrested?” Linnert asked, when she’d pulled away from their long kiss.

  “Yeah. And there’s almost always a killer getting arrested somewhere.”

  Part Two

  36

  New York, 2004

  Aaron Mandle had been found guilty on four counts of murder and one of breaking and entering. It took the jury less than two hours to reach a verdict.

  When the verdict was read, he didn’t blink.

  The authorities decided to wait until late at night, when the city would be quiet and the streets what passed in New York for deserted, before transporting Mandle back to Rikers Island where he’d be imprisoned while awaiting sentencing.

  The Department of Corrections prisoner transport van, locks reinforced, steel mesh over the windows, rode roughly over pavement seams and potholes and stayed on side streets as much as possible. In front sat two uniformed, armed officers. In back, safely separated from them, sat Aaron Mandle and a hulking black wife-killer named Hugo Ward. Ward and Mandle sat facing each other on side benches, handcuffed and wearing leg manacles.

  The huge, muscular Ward was bouncing around awkwardly on the hard bench, having difficulty keeping his balance. Now and then he’d glance over at Mandle, who rode smoothly and easily with the motion. Mandle looked calmly back at him.

  Guy likes pussy so much he had to kill it, Ward thought. Fucked up in the head. Ward had done a stretch behind walls and figured a sex maniac sicko like Mandle would wind up somebody’s wife. See how he’d like pussy when he became it.

>   “The fuck’s your problem?” Ward asked. The Night Spider guy, staring at him with those creepy dark eyes, was getting to him.

  Now the guy was bending over like he was tying his shoe, only there were no laces on these shoes.

  Ward thought he might chip a tooth, the way the goddamn armored van or whatever it was kept bouncing around. Night Spider guy kept working with his shoe. Ward was getting curious. And angrier. He might go over there and kick the shit outta the Night Spider guy, handcuffs, leg chains, and all. Maybe become a goddamn hero. “Fuck’s your problem? You hear me?”

  Mandle was having a little problem working off the shoe without cutting his foot on the long steel screw he’d worked from the underside of the courtroom table where he sat during the course of his trial. It had taken him two days to loosen the screw, and another three days to work it back and forth and twist it and twist it until it was out and belonged to him. He’d sneaked it back to his holding cell, then sharpened its point and gradually honed its threads on hard concrete.

  At the time the verdict was read, the screw was tightly concealed beneath his right toe, where it joined his foot. He’d changed clothes for his trip back to Rikers, leaving behind his suit and dress shoes, and again wearing his convict’s jumpsuit and prison shoes. Prison shoes in which the long steel screw was more easily concealed.

  “I ast you a question!” Ward said. “You fuckin’ deaf?” Now the guy was taking off his shoe, peeling off his sock and putting it inside, and stuffing shoe and sock inside his jumpsuit. Ward was getting bummed out.

  Weird-looking damn foot! Enough of this shit! Get the fucker!

  Ward had risen from the bench and was halfway across the van when he realized the Night Spider guy had gotten up a second before he had and was coming at him. Punched him in the stomach. No power. No fuckin’problem!

  No, not a punch!

  Ward had been knifed before and knew he was cut. He looked down and saw a glint of silver clutched in the guy’s right hand. The silver flashed and Ward’s jumpsuit material parted, revealing soft dark flesh and scarlet blood. The pointed silver thing drew back, popped flesh again, and Ward felt himself being sliced open from pubis to sternum. It had all happened so fast he was stunned and hadn’t had time to react. Now the Night Spider guy was . . .